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UNIVER

OU 166970

VERSAL

RARY

The Sociology of Georg Simmel

The Sociology of
Georg Simmel

TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

KurtH. Wolff

The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois

Copyright 1950 by The Free Press. All rights in this book are reserved
and no part thereof may be reprinted without permission from the
copyright owners, except small portions used in connection with a
review or notice of the book in a magazine or newspaper. The Sociol-
ogy OF Georg Simmel has been set in Bodoni and Baskerville types,
printed on Antique Wove paper supplied for this book by the Per-
kins and Squier Company. Composition, printing, and binding by
Knickerbocker Printing Corp., New York. Manufactured in the
United States of America.

TO THE MEMORY OF

OSCAR LOUIS WOLFF
HANS SCHIEBELHUTH

KARL WOLFSKEHL

Acknowledgements

To Professor Virgil G. Hinshaw, Jr., for closely reading the
entire manuscript, for numerous clarifications and improve-
ments of the text, and for philosophical discussions that have
left their impact upon the Introduction;

To Professor Arthur Salz for over-all help on text and In-
troduction, and for biographical and bibliographical infor-
mation;

To Dr. Else Simmel for biographical and bibliographical
information, and for permission to translate and publish a
letter from Georg Simmel;

To Professor Albert Salomon for orientation and advice
concerning many matters, including selections;

To Prbfessors Everett C. Hughes and Talcott Parsons for
general consultation;

To Professor Meno Lovenstein for suggestions regarding
the organization and wording of the Introduction;

To Professors John Dewey and Arthur Child for biblio
graphical additions;

To Professors H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills for permis-
sion to use their translation of Simmel’s Die Grossstddte und
das Geistesleben;

To my wife for unfailing help, secretarial and otherwise.

—Kurt H. Wolff

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

Introduction xvii

1. Fragments of SimmeFs Life and Mind xviii

2. Simmel in America xxiv

3. The Translations xxv

4. SimmeFs “Field of Sociology’' xxvii

(a) “society” and “individual” xxviii

(b) sociology xxxi

(d) “general” SOCIOLOGY xxxii

(e) “formal” SOCIOLOGY xxxiv

(f) “philosophical” SOCIOLOGY xxxiv

(g) SIMMEL’s SOCIOLOGY AS THE EXPRESSION OF AN ATTI-
TUDE XXXV

(h) SIMMEL’s problems XXXV

(l) THE “socialization OF THE SPIRIT*’ VS. SOCIOLOGY

AS A METHOD XXXVi

(j) “general” vs. “formal” SOCIOLOGY xxxvii

(k) the “societal forms” xxxviii

(l) the relation of SIMMEL’s PHILOSOPHICAL TO HIS

SOCIOLOGICAL CONCERNS XXXix

5. The Methodological and Philosophical Importance of-

SimmeFs Sociology xl

Notes xlii

Appendices

(a) LITERATURE ON SIMMEL K

(b) the bibliography of SIMMEL’s WRITINGS liv

(d) SIMMEL's writings AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH Ivii

(e) DISCUSSIONS, IN ENGLISH, OF SIMMEL AS A SOCIOLOGIST lix

(f) SOURCES OF THE TRANSLATIONS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME Ixi

(g) a note ON the translation Ixiii

X Contents

PART one: Fundamental Problems of Sociology (Indi-
vidual and Society)

I. The Field of Sociology 3

1. Society and Knowledge of Society 3

2. The Abstract Character of Sociology 1 1

3. Sociology as a Method 13

4. The Problem Areas of Sociology 16

(a) the sociological study of historical life (“gen-
eral SOCIOLOGY**) 16

(b) the study of societal forms (“pure, or formal,

SOCIOLOGY**) 21

CAL ASPECTS OF SOCIETY (“PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIOL-
OGY**) 23

II. The Social and the Individual Level (An Example of
General Sociology) 26

1. The Determinateness of the Group and the Vacillation

of the Individual 26

2. Individual vs. Group Member 28

3. Esteem of the Old and of the New 29

4. The Sociological Significance of Individual Similarity

and Dissimilarity 30

5. The IndividuaFs Superiority over the Mass 31

6. The Simplicity and Radicalism of the Mass 34

7. The Emotionality of the Mass Appeal and of the Mass 34

8. The Level of Society as the Approximation to the Low-
est Common Level of Its Members 36

III. Sociability (An Example of Pure, of Formal, Sociol-
ogy) 40

1. Contents (Materials) vs. Forms of Social Life 40

2. The Autonomization of Contents 41

3. Sociability as the Autonomous Form, or Play-Form, of

Sociation 43

(a) unreality, tact, impersonality 45

Contents xi

(b) “sociability thresholds*'

(d) the artificial world of SOCIABILITY

(e) SOCIAL GAMES

(f) COQUETRY

(g) CONVERSATION

(h) SOCIABILITY AS THE PLAY-FORM OF ETHICAL PROBLEMS
AND OF THEIR SOLUTION

(l) HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS

(j) THE “superficial** CHARACTER OF SOCIABILITY

IV. Individual and Society in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-
Century Views of Life (An Example of Philosophical
Sociology)

1. Individual Life as the Basis of the Conflict between
Individual and Society

2 . Individual Egoism vs. Individual Self-Perfection as an
Objective Value

3. The Social vs. the Human

4. The Eighteenth Century

(a) the freedom of the individual

(b) the antinomy between freedom and equality

(d) individualism in KANT

(e) the dual role of “nature**

(f) kant*s “categorical imperative**: individuality as
the synthesis of freedom and equality

5. The Nineteenth Century

(a) socialism

(b) the new individualism: the incomparability of
THE individual

PART two: Quantitative Aspects of the Group

I. On THE Significance of Numbers for Social Life
1. Small Groups
(a) socialism

xii Contents

(b) religious sects 89

2. Large Groups: The Mass 93

3. Group Size, Radicalism, and Cohesiveness 94

4. Paradoxes in Group Structure 96

5. Numerical Aspects of Prominent Group Members 97

6. Custom, Law, Morality 99

II. The Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

AND OF Certain Groups 105

1. Introduction 105

2. Numerically Equal Subdivisions 105

3. The Number as a Symbol of Group Division 107

4. Group Organization on Numerical Principles and Its

Effect upon the Individual 109

5. The Social Gathering (“Party*') 111

6. The Extended Family 114

7. Quantity and Quality 115

III. The Isolated Individual and the Dyad 118

1. Introduction 118

2. The Isolated Individual 118

3. Isolation 119

4. Freedom 120

5. The Dyad 122

6. Characteristics of the Dyad 125

(a) TRIVIALITY I25

(b) intimacy 126

7. Monogamous Marriage 128

8. Delegation of Duties and Responsibilities to the Group 133

9. The Expansion of the Dyad 135

(a) the TRIAD vs. THE DYAD 135

(b) two TYPES OF INDIVIDUALITY AND THEIR CONNECTION

WITH DYADIC AND OTHER RELATIONSHIPS 137

(d) the formal RADICALISM OF THE MASS I42

Contents xiii

IV. The Triad 145

1. The Sociological Significance of the Third Element 145

2. The Non-Partisan and the Mediator 145

3. The Tertius Gaudens 154

4. Divide et Impera 162

V. The Importance of Specific Numbers for Relations

AMONG Groups ' 170

1. Group Subdivisions 170

2. The Decimal Principle 171

3. The Outside Regulation of Groups According to Their

Maximum and Minimum Sizes 174

PART three: Superordination and Subordination

I. Introduction 181

1. Domination, a Form of Interaction 181

2. Authority and Prestige 183

3. Leader and Led 185

4. Interaction in the Idea of “Law'' 186

II. Subordination under an Individual 190

1. Three Kinds of Subordination 190

2. Kinds of Subordination under an Individual 190

3. Unification of a Group in Opposition to the Ruler 192

4. Dissociating Effects of Subordination under an Individ-
ual 194

5. The “Higher Tribunal" 195

6. Domination and Leveling 197

7. Domination and Downward Gradation 206

8. Domination and Upward Gradation 209

9. Mixture of Downward and Upward Gradation 210

10. Strength and Perseverance of Domination by One 213

11. Subordination of the Group to a Member or to an Out-
sider 216

12. Coordination of Parties in Case of Arbitration 221

xiv Contents

III. Subordination under a Plurauty 224

1. Consequences for the Subordinates of Subordination

under a Plurality 224

2. Subordination under a Heterogeneous Plurality 229

3. Subordination under Mutually Opposed Superordi-
nates 229

(a) total subordination 229

(b) relative subordination 232

4. Subordination under Stratified Superordinates 234

(a) coNTAcrr between top and bottom of the stratifi-
cation system 234

(b) transmission of pressure 236

5. The Phenomenon of Outvoting 239

IV. Subordination under a Principle 250

1. Subordination under a Principle vs. a Person 250

2. Subordination under Objects 253

3. Conscience 254

4. Society and “Objectivity*' 256

5. The Effect of Subordination under a Principle upon

the Relations between Superordinance and Subordi-
nates 261

V. Superordination and Subordination and Degrees of
Domination and Freedom 268

1. Superordination without Subordinates 268

2. Superordination in Lieu of Freedom 273

3. The Sociological Error of Socialism and Anarchism 282

4. Super-Subordination without Degradation 283

5. Coordination and Reciprocal Super-Subordination 286

6. Super-Subordination as a Form of Social Organization
and as an Expression of Individual Differences; Person

vs. Position 291

7. Aristocracy vs. Equality 295

8. Coercion 298

Contents xv

9. The Inevitably Disproportionate Distribution of Qual-
ifications and Positions 500

PART four: The Secret and the Secret Society

I. Knowledge, Truth, and Falsehood in Human Rela-
tions 307

1. Knowledge of One Another 307

2. Knowledge of External Nature vs. Knowledge of Per-
sons 309

3. Truth, Error, and Social Life 310

4. The Individual as an Object of Knowledge 310

5. The Nature of the Psychic Process and of Communica-
tion 311

6. The Lie 312

11. Types of Social Relationships by Degrees of Recipro-
cal Knowledge of Their Participants 317

1. Interest Groups 317

2. Confidence under More and Less Complex Conditions 318

3. “Acquaintance" 320

4. Discretion 320

5. Friendship and Love 324

6. Marriage 326

III. Secrecy 330

1. The Role of the Secret in Social Life 330

2. The Fascination of Secrecy 332

3. The Fascination of Betrayal 333

4. Secrecy and Individualization 334

5. Adornment 338

IV. The Secret Society 345

1. Protection and Confidence 345

2. Silence 349

3. Written Communication 352

4. Secrecy and Sociation 355

xvi Contents

5. Hierarchy 356

6. Ritual 358

7. Freedom 360

8. Features of the Secret Society as Quantitative Modifica-
tions of General Group Features 361

(a) separateness, formality, consciousness 362

(b) exclusion: signs of recognition 363

(d) degrees of initiation: formal and material SEPA-
RATION FROM THE OUTSIDE 366

(e) group egoism 367

(f) INCLUSIVENESS AND EXCLUSIVENESS AS GROUP PRINCI-
PLES 368

(g) SECLUSION FROM THE OUTSIDE AND INTERNAL CO-
HESION 369

(h) CENTRALIZATION 370

(l) DE-INDIVIDUALIZATION 372

(j) EQUALITY OF MEMBERS 374

(k) the SECRET SOCIETY AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT 375

PART five: Faithfulness and Gratitude; Negativity of Col-
lective Behavior; the Stranger; Metropolis

I. Faithfulness and Gratitude 379

II. The Negative Character of Collective Behavior 396

III. The Stranger 402

IV. The Metropolis and Mental Life 409

INDEX 427

Introduction

simmel’s readers may
well find themselves puzzled once they try to analyze their im-
pression: does it come from an extraordinary mind or from its
product, from a process or from an achievement, from an atti-
tude or from the discoveries made by virtue of it? The dichot-
omies may be clarified by testimonials of Simmels hearers, who
“too, helped build”; Simmel took “his students down an
oblique pit into the mine”; he was not a teacher, he was an
“inciter.” “Just about the time when . . . one felt he had
reached a conclusion, he had a way of raising his right arm and,
with three fingers of his hand, turning the imaginary object so
as to exhibit still another facet.” ^ A lecture by Simmel was
creation-at-the-moment-of -delivery: the essence of SimmeFs
spell seems to have been the spontaneous exemplification of the
creative pro(!ess.

Who wasythis man? Does his life give^Jnsight into his signifi-
cance? Is^ there ^relation between ^mall’s biography and his
work? What little we know indicates that biqgraphy^is the less
important, the less true to type and the more original x^he^man;
but there are certain data we feel relevant in all cases, , if only
for the contrast betweer](<a man and his history to stand out the
more clearly: “to be a stranger is ... a very positive relation;
it is a specific form of interaction.” 2 And further, once we are
aroused to explore a life as a clueito a mind, and the mind as
a clue to its work, we become aware of our ignorance. In the
case of Simmel, with hardly a biography, no biographical diary,
with few letters existing and practically none published,® the
case is worse; worse still, because what biographical facts are
known suggest only the most tenuous hypotheses concerning
their relation to his work. We pass them in review quickly,
along with what light they may throw on SimmeFs mind.

xvii

xviii Introduction

§ 1. Fragments of SimmeFs Life and Mind

* Georg Simmel,^ the youngest of seven children, was bom in
Berlin on March i, 1858. His father, a partner in a well-known
chocolate factory, died when Georg was a boy. A friend of the
family, the founder of an international music publishing house,
was appointed his guardian. He left Simmel a considerable for-
tune which enabled him to lead the life of a scholar. Simmel’s
mother was temperamental and domineering.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Simmel entered the
University of Berlin at the age of eighteen to study history. De-
spite Mommsen’s impact on him, he soon changed to philos-
ophy. Later, he named Lazarus and Steinthal, the founders of
V olkerpsychologie , as his most important teachers; but he also
studied with Harms and Zeller (philosophy), with Bastian (psy-
chology), with Droysen, Sybel, Treitschke, Grimm, and Jordan
(history). As the second “minor” in his doctoral examination,
he chose medieval Italian, and made a s pecial study of Petrarch.
In x88i, he received his doctor’s degree with a dissertation on
“The Nature of Matter according to Kant’s Physical Monadol-
ogy.” From 1885 to 1900, he was a Privatdozent (a lecturer un-
paid except for student fees) in philosophy, and for another
fourteen years, an ausserordentlicher Professor ("professor
extraordinary,” an honorary, but not a remunerative title) —
both at the University of Berlin. In 1914, at the age of 56, four
years before his death, he was called to Strasbourg as a full
professor (Ordinarius). He died on September 26, 1918.

Simmel’s slow advancement ® stood in contrast with his great
reputation as a speaker and thinker. But for many, this reputa-
tion was that of an exclusively negative and critical spirit; and
both Simmel’s mind and work were the indirect basis of the
judgment. His mind has been characterized as dialectical; there
was a preponderance of the logical and epistemological ele-
ment over the normative; there was his “micipscopic'method,”
the absence of the “uiierring instinct of^we truly artistic man,”
the overabundance of associations.® An* in his first books, his
power of discrimination was employecjjnritically more than con-
structively, especially in his “Introduction to Moral Science,”
a survey of ethical concepts. But unless one is critical of a criti-

Introduction xix

cal attitude, one must agree with Simmel himself, who wrote
(to Max Weber, in connection with an abortive effort to obtain
a professorship for him at Heidelberg, March i8, 1908):

‘‘What you write has not surprised me. . . . Only this,
briefly: in certain circles the idea exists that I am an exclusively
critical, even a destructive spirit, and that my lectures lead one
only to negation. Perhaps I don’t have to tell you that this is a
nasty untruth. My lectures, as, for many years, all my work,
tend exclusively toward the positive, toward the demonstra-
tion of a deeper insight into world and spirit, with complete
renunciation of polemics and criticism in regard to divergent
conditions and theories. Whoever understands my lectures and
books at all, cannot understand them in any other way. Never-
theless, that opinion has existed for a long time; it is my kismet;
and I am convinced that the minister’s ‘unfavorable mood’
goes back to some such communication . .

Simmel lectured on “logic, principles of philosophy, history
of philosophy, modem philosophy, Kant, Lotze, Schopenhauer,
Darwin, pessimism, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of
art, psychology, social psychology, political psychology, and
sociology.” ® His writings ranged equally far, and he published
mu^._®. The areas of his major production may be classified as
sociology, philosophy of history, ethics, general philosophy,
philosophy of art, philosophy of contemporary civilization, and
metaphysics.^^

Reading Simmel prompts an inquiry into his mind. Simmel
often appears as though in the midst of writing he were over-
whelmed by an idea, by an avalanche of ideas, and as if he in-
corporated them without interrupting himself, digesting and
assimilating only to the extent granted him by the onrush. This,
perhaps, strikes some as personal about his writing, and others
as disorganized, even irritating. His few published aphorisms
and posthumous fragments suggest that one way in which he
developed an essay was to begin with ideas occurring to him as
themes that were jotted down for later elaboration and connec-
tion.

“The Simmelian order resembles the interrelations in the collec-
tion of a real friend of the arts, who has alwayjLhQU|^lt only

XX Introduction

what excited him and was an experience to him . . . And yet,
the collection has a compelling unity, because all its pieces were
chosen on the basis of a unique attitude toward art, of a unique
view of life and world.**

But ‘'sometimes**

“one has the feeling that Simmel . . . insistently prefers Cinder-
ellas among experiences (so to speak), either to reveal, precisely
in them, his virtuosity of philosophizing ... or to show how,
even from them, paths lead into ultimate depths.** 12

Simmers relation to things — “things,** “objects,** the “objec-
tive,** “objectivity** occupied^him in many of his writings, espe-
cially in his “Philosophy of Money** — ^seems to have been as
intimate as his relation to ide^s. Wandering through the streets
of a city where he had given a lecture, he discovered two black
Wedgwood bowls in a cobbler*s shop — ^which was the beginning
of a collection. He may have hit upon ideas in a similar fashion,
and they, too, were often beginnings of collections, if they did
not remain isolated discoveries which he put in his diary or filed
away or did not record at all.^^ Perhaps one could makd a good
case for the proposition that he was most profound in his aphor-
isms, in this, shots into the unknown — or perhaps it is merely
that the distance between the allusion and the uncharted (un-
charted at least for Simmel) is so much more striking than be-
tween the road and the landscape through which it leads. A few
samples may clarify the point:

“I don*t kfiow which of these two shows man*s vulgarity
more: when he gets accustomed to ugliness or when he gets ac-
customed to beauty.

Objectivity toward people often hides the most boundless
solip^sm.

To tyeat not only every person, but every thing as if it were
its owii^end: this would be ^ cosmic ethics.

In comedy, a highly individual fate Sis fulfilled by typical
characters; in tragedy, a general-human fate by individual char-
acters.

All that can be proved can also be disputed. Only the un-
provable is indisputable.

Introduction xxi

We think we actually understand things only when we have
traced them back to what we do not understand and cannot
understand — to causality, to axioms, to God, to character.”

Simmers attitude toward events and processes during his
lifetime is difficult to infer. His writings reveal little, although
his interest in certain contemporary literary, philosophical, and
artistic phenomena is obvious, and his constitutive function in
some of them would reward investigation.^® But up to the war,
he was not interested in following the history of his time. With
the outbreak of the war, however, he began to write much in
great agitation, and he continued to write and speak until shortly
before his death. In the beginning he was swayed, it seems, by
the general excitement; and, in a speech on ^‘Germany’s Inner
Transformation,” delivered in Strasbourg in November, 1914,
he spoke and then published such phrases as “This is what is so
wonderful about this time”; ''history we aie now experiencing”;
“I dare say that most of us have only now experienced what may
be called an absolute situation”; “I love Germany and therefore
want it to live — to hell with all ‘objective’ justification of this
wil^in terms of culture, ethics, history, or God knows what else”;
“Germany . . . again pregnant with a great possibility”; “This
war somehdW has a significance different from that of other
wars”; and the like. But only fourteen months later, in another
speech on the “Crisis of Culture,” held in Vienna, he said this
about the war, and published it\in the same pamphlet (“The
War and the Spiritual Decisions,” 4917):

“The most basic formula of a highly developed culture — a
formula which transcends all particular contents — ^may be sug-
gested by'^designating it as a crisis constantly held back. . . .
Insofar as [the war] has any effect at all on these fundamental,
inner forms of culture ... it can merely inaugurate a scene or
an act of\this endless drama.”

And in this vein, as a pointed and passionate analyst of con-
temporary civilization, he wrote his last comments on the times
(especially the speech just quoted, “The Idea of Europe,” and
“The Conflict of Modern Civilization” [1918] — when he was
not the morally outraged critic of misconduct or spoke in the

xxii Introduction

service of charitable organizations, such as the Red Cross, or to
soldiers at the front.

Two-and-a-half months before his death, he wrote in a letter:

‘‘There is hardly anything to say about us. We live in the
antinomy between the most enormous inner excitements and
tensions and a cloisterly secluded, evenly bleak external exist-
ence. . . . The conflict over the fact that one is firmly tied to
Germany's and Europe’s fates and is tom without resistance into
all of their turmoil — but that for the very sake of Germany and
Europe one must free oneself from this and stand above it in
the redeeming sphere of the spirit: this conflict demands, even
for the very imperfect measure in which one can bear or solve
it from hour to hour, an effort which I don’t know how much
longer can be sustained.”

In the end, Simmel no longer asked about political events.
‘‘During his last days,” Gertrud Simmel, his wife, wrote shortly
after he died, “Georg no longer wanted the paper, and I did not
want to bring it uncalled lest I disturb him in his thoughts.”
And ten years later:

“Before he died, Georg Simmel said emphatically and on
more than one occasion that he had done his essential work;
that he could merely have applied his way of looking at things
farther and farther and to ever new objects — to something
really new it would not have come.

And yet, one felt something like a reservation in these utter-
ances; and in fact he once spoke of it by adding: “Unless I had
another twenty years of full strength ahead of me, something
which in my age is not at all my share,” His reservation pre-
sumably concerned studies which would have been in the pur-
suance of the line traced by his last book, Lebensanschauung
[“View of Life”] — in the pursuance of this line, or perhaps in
a new turn.” 22

Simmel seems to have been impressed from the beginning
by the relationism of all items (a more suggestive name for much
of his “r^tivism” ^s), which he found to haujnj:. ever new terri-
tories-;:^rom ^ciplogy to history to ethics ta epistemology to art.
But he appears to have yearned for an Archimedean point; and

Introduction xxiii

although he may be said always to have had such a point, he
made it explicit (if at all) only in his metaphysics of life, in
Lebensanschauung, which he found shortly before he died. Most
of this was in 1918 when, knowing that he was stricken with
cancer of the liver, he w^nt to the Black Forest to finish the book.
Those who knew him*^est agree he was greatest, came into his
perfection, during those last months, in his life even more than
in the book written out of it — that, clearly, what he once said
of a beloved person, applied to him: h e was “a fl ower on the tree
of mankind.”

“What permitted Simmel to get along with a minimum of
personal experiences and to reconstruct and sympathize with
the most alien and varied conditions, attitudes, conflicts, suffer-
ings, and happinesses? Was he ultimately a naive intellect who
Irew upon the depth and the wealth, of his own inner experi-
ences? Or did he have a kind of^clairvoyant imagination and the
capacity to push this imagination dialectically ever further? Or
did the free mobility of his intellect awaken and progressively
strengthen, as its own complement, a longing after roots in a
firm province, after a home in a circle of ultimate experience?

This, too, is possible.”

•

Simmel’s conception of philosophy as the expression of a
human type raises in a new light the old question of the nature
of subject and object and of their relation, most conspicuously
perhaps as the connection between attitude and validity (a vari-
ant of the question posed earlier here). To focus on this problem,
in fact, may objectively be the most fruitful attack on the yield
of Simmel’s work. But it is well to remember a suggestion in re-
gard to*^ comprehensive study of him, which has to solve two
tasks above all:

“first, it must illumine for us Simmel’s intellectual existence, as
he illumined Goethe’s [in his book on Goethe]; that is, his deeds
and omissions, his creations and accomplishments, must be un-
derstoo<Fbut of the uniqueness of his personality. And then, his
works must be collected, ordered, and minutely indexed, for
only then can they become (fertile for science . . . , which will
be able to change all the gold Aat glitters and shines in this
work into its own coin.” 27

xxiv Introduction

But it would also seem promising to appreciate the matters
about which Simmel did riot write (or hardly wrote), and for
what reasons: for instance, language, music, and “human types"
other than Rembrandt, Miche^ngelo, Rodin, Goethe, the “ulti-
mate heightenings of his own self." And what matters did he
take for granted? Pointing analysis on such question^^ight not
only lead to/ formulating his “central attitude," but might
also elucidate the objective problem of^the relation between at-
titude and validity, and between subject and object in gene ral.
It is hoped that in the last two sections of this introduction
studies of this sort are anticipated.

§ 2. Simmel in America

In the United States, Simmel never had a great name as a
philosopher, but from the turn of the century to the ’twenties
he was well known as a sociologist. Between 1893 and 1910, a
number of his writings, most of them sociological, appeared in
American periodicals,^^ especially in The American Journal of
Sociology, the majority of them in translations by Albion W.
Small. Park and Burgess gave him a prominent position in their
classic Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921).®^ Spyk-
man’s ^The Social Theory of Georg Simmel, further evidence of
his enthusiastic reception, followed shortly (1925), but its author,
along with Park, was presently criticized by Sorokin.®^ In the
following year, Abel published a new appraisal of Simmel’s
sociology (1929), and soon afterward (1932) appeared Becker’s
elaboration of von Wiese’s “systematic sociology," a work in
which Simmel plays an important role.®® These few events mark
his career in America to date.

Fifty years ago, American sociology was still in the process of
emerging from its European influences, especially the German.
Many of its best known representatives spent some of their stu-
dent days in Germany, and numerous products of German sociol-
ogy, conspicuously among them some of Simmel’s, were at once
made available to American readers.®^ But with the development
of sociology as an empirical and quantitative study, interest in
the more theoretical and philosophical European literature re-
ceded. The last decade, however, has witnessed a new appeal of

Introduction xxv

selected European contributions, the most important cases in
point being Talcott Parsons* The Structure of Social Action and
the various Max Weber translations.®®

Translation, of course, is neither a prerequisite nor a guar-
antee of acquaintance or influence. Some American sociologists
are well-versed in European sociology, whether translated or
not, and others, perhaps, do not fully utilize what renditions
exist. And it is a question whether a translation is as helpful in
communicating a thinker’s ideas as an appraisal of his thought.®®
It seems obvious, however, that it is the most desirable means of
introducing two types of works: those ought to be introduced
into American scholarship whose foremost relevance lies in
empirical knowledge or methodological acumen not yet sur-
passed by American achievements (and here Weber and Durk-
heim would seem to qualify pre-eminently); and those whose
greatest importance lies in the exemplification — predominantly,
or in addition to the first criterion — of a suggestive intellectual
approach. Simmel’s work appears best to fit this second category.

§ 3 . The Translations

The translations contained in this book have been taken
from three sources. Part One, '‘Fundamental Problems of So-
ciology (Individual and Society),” is a complete rendition of
Grundfragen der Soziologie (Individuum und Gesellschaft)
(1917), Simmel’s last comprehensive statement on sociology.
Parts Two through Five, Chapter 3, inclusive, are taken from
his major work in the field, Soziologie, Untersuchungen iiber
die Formen der V ergesellschaftung (1908). (Parts Two through
Four are given in the order in which they appear as chapters in
that work; Part Five, Chapters 1-3, consists of *'Exkurse** con-
tained in other chapters of Soziologie not included here.) The
remaining pages of the volume (Part Five, Chapter 4) are the
translation of a lecture, *'Die Grossstddte und das Geistesleben'*
(1902-03).®'^

Simmel appended the following note to the table of contents
of Soziologie:

"Each of these chapters contains many discussions which more
or less closely surround its title problem. But they are not only

xxvi Introduction

treatments of it: they also are relatively independent contribu-
tions to the total problem [of the book]. The ultimate intention
and the methodological structure of these studies required their
arrangement undei\(few central concepts but, at the same time,
required llgreat latitude in regard to the particular questions
treated under their heads. The chapter headings, therefore, cover
the content only quite imperfectly; the content is given in the
subject index at the end of the volume.” *8

This suggests that the ten chapters of Soziologie might be likened
to connected nets which must be opened by those who want to
know what they contain. Simmel^ short “P i^ffac e” to the work
gives an important clue to their arrangement:

“If a study is carried on according to the legitimate cognitive
purposes and methods of an existing science, the connection with
this science determines the place of the study: an introduction
to it need not establish the right^to this place but can simply
claim a right already justified. But if an investigation lacks such
a connection (which would, at least, eliminate the need for dis-
kussing its right to its specific way of asking questions); if the
manner in which the investigation connects phenomena finds no
model for its formula in any domain of the recognized disciplines
— then, clearly, the determination of its place within the system
of the sciences, the discussion of its methods and potential fer-
tilities, is a new task in itself, which requires its solution not in
a preface, but as the first part of the very investigation.

This is the situation of the present attempt at giving the
fluctuating Concept of sociology an unambiguous content, domi-
nated by one, methodologically certain, problem-idea. The re-
quest to the reader to hold on, uninterruptedly, to this one
method of asking questions, as it is developed in the first chapter
(since otherwise these pages might impress him as an accumula-
tion of unrelated facts and reflections) — this request is the only
matter which must be mentioned at the head of this book.”

The first chapter, on “the problem of sociology,” including
the epistelmological discussion of the question, “How is society
possible?” is not contained in the present volume. It is replaced
by Simmel’s later conception (Part One, Chapter i, below) ac-

^Jjilreduction xxvii

cording to which there are three kinds' of sociology that are
exemplified in the remaining three chapters of Part One. The
selections making up the remaining four fifths of this book are
indeed held together by a “specific way of asking questions,”
by “one, methodologically certain, problem-idea”; but it is
doubtful that Simmel gave as “unambiguous” a formula of it
as he seems to have believed he did.

There are perhaps no intrinsic reasons for preferring the
passages selected to others; the major reason is that several Amer-
ican sociologists 39 acquainted with Simmel’s work, and with the
teaching of it, agreed upon their importance (and on that of
several others whose inclusion has been prevented only by tech-
nical circumstances).

§ 4 . SimmeVs “Field of Sociology’*

For reasons of economy, comments on this book will be re-
stricted to its first chapter, an over-all outline of sociology. In
contrast to\the preceding paragraphs, the following pages thus
deal with Simmel’s work. The treatment, of course, is colored
by the earlier statements, with their (not altogether explicit)
conception of Simmel. But an interpretation, Simmel wrote,
“will always, admittedly or not, also be a confession. of. the in-
terpreter,” ^9 and if the interpreter’s “involvement” leads to in-
sights not otherwise gained, there is a chance that it becomes an
objective example, and thus justified.

Two observations must be made, however, before discussing
the “field of sociology.” The first, which the reader will make for
himself, is that the following comments cann ot be understood
without a knowledge of their text. Without the second observa-
tion explicitly made, the reader may gain a false impression or
become confused. The point is that there exists no contradiction
between the positive attitude exhibited in many of the preceding
pages, and the critical attitude exemplified in the present sec-
tion. The work commented upon is so. important that no human
precautions are called for. The general statements an sociology^
of which the text discussed is a pre-eminent example, are among
the most vulnerable of Simmel’s sociological writing but for
this very reason, the most profoundly important to*nistorians

xxviii Introduction

and philosophers of sociology. Simmers topical chapters, a good
sample of which is offered in this volume, are equally if not more
brilliant; and many of them, as the reader will discover, have
hot been surpassed jin their grasp, depth, sensitivity, timeliness.
But in these chapters, Simmel is creating, and to watch him at
work is a delight. Here, in his methodological and metaphysical
concerns, he seems, rather, to be struggling; and the reaction,
to the extent he is, is not delight, but sympathy, empathy, awe,
concern, participation, involvement. Even here, however, we
may be inclined to expose ourselves to that aspect of his mind
in which the distinction we are accustomed to make between
science and philosophy seems to dim and become precocious
and petty, dissolving, as it does, in the crucible of creativity. If
it is nevertheless insisted upon in the following pages, this is done
in a combined act of daredeviltry and devil's advocacy, in order
to clarify the problems which Simmel (it must not be forgotten)
has given us, for us to receive and transform.

'‘society" and "individual"

IF-.*

In order to delimit the nature of sociology, Simmel criticizes
two equally misleading conceptions of its subject matter, "so-
ciety." One of them minimizes the concept; the other exagger-
ates it. That is, Simmel suggests, we cannot be satisfied with ad-
mitting either ^hat individuals alone are "real," or that society
alone is "real/ (merely because all human life occurs in society):
we cannot do without;, either of the two ideas. For, "society" is
among the "least dubious and most legitimate contents" of '*hu-
man knowledge"; and the "individual," though not an ultimate
cognitive unit, a (presumably ii^rSBicable) object "of expe-
rience."

Almost three decades earlier (in Vber sociale Differenzier-
ung), when Simmel faced the individual-society "problem" for
the first time, he presented a similar argument. But instead of
denying the individual as a cognitive object, he insisted upon
the difficulty^ due to our knowledge of evolution^ of so conceiv-
ing of him: logic (he wrote) leads us to recognize only atoms as
the ultimately "real." In Grundfragen, however, in his formu-
lation of the individual, a unit of experience , he presents a

Introduction xxix

conception very closely related to that of Dilthey, who main-
tained:

“We know natural objects from without through our senses. . .
How different is the way in which mental life is given to usi In
contrast to external perception, inner perception rests upon an
awareness {Innewerden), a lived experience (Erleben), it is im-
mediately given.’’ ^2

Yet shortly after calling the individual a unit of experience,
Simmel returns to his earlier argument:

“Color molecules, letters, particles of water indeed ‘exist’; but
the painting, the book, the river are syntheses: they are units
that do not exist in objective reality but only in the conscious-
ness which constitutes them. . . . It is perfectly arbitrary to stop
the redudfion, which leads to ultimately real elements, at the
individual. For this reduction is interminable.’’

But in “Social Differentiation,’’ Simmel recognized atomism as
theoretically inescapable, though practically unusable: “The
question of how many and which real units we have to fuse into
a higher but only subjective unit ... is only a question of
practice.” J^ow, by contrast, he proceeds to lead atomism ad
absurdum, even if still on epistemological grounds. For he sug-
gests that atomism is due to an erroneous conception of the
nature of cognition: the more adequate conception of it is to
consider it as a process of abstraction. (The abstract character of
sociology is discussed in Sect. 2.)

But Simmel is here engaging in a fallacious argument. Ac-
tually, he is not distinguishing between two conceptions of cog-
nition, but between two heterogeneous inquiries (about whose
connection, furthermore, he is silent). The first inquiry, to which
“atomism” is a possible answer, is into the nature of reality; it
is ontological. The second inquiry, to which “cognition is ab-
straction” is a possible answer, is into the nature of cognition;
it is epistemological. Thus, by switching from one inquiry
(ontological) to another (epistemological), Simmel tries to vali-
date the concept of “society” epistemologically; but as a sociol-
ogist, that is, as a scientist, he needs no such validation. For as a
scientist, he needs only a pragmatic justification: he must merely

XXX Introduction

show that 'a concept (in this instance, the concept o£ “sogiety")
is useful) for his theory or research; the pragmatic justification
requires no ontological or epistemological supplement.

To make this clearer, attention may be called to Simmel’s
discussion of the(isolated indivicju^l as a sociological phenome?
non (Part Two, Ch. 3, Sects. 2-4). There he simply finds it use-^
ful so to consider the^individual, because he thus discovers maf)-‘
ters he would not otherwise have noticed; and he is far from
raising suchyontofdgical questions as whether the individual is
a marginal case or a residuum of sociation or whether, inversely,
society is a mere instrument of individuation, etc. It is precisely
this kind of question, however, which Simmel asks in the present
context, his general development of sociology. He is aware, here,
of his “insecure foundations,” while in the discussion of the
quantitative aspects of the group (which contains the treatment
of the isolated individual), he is preoccupied with empirical
challenges and thus is sure of his “solid structures.” (On the con-
trast between “insecure foundations” and “solid structures,” see
below.)

At any rate, in the present context, Simmel fails to distinguish
between a philosophicaTand ar^pragmatic justification.^* Is this
an oversight? Or does it suggest that Simmel’s conception of
“sociology” is not that of a science alone, but of a scientific-
philosophical enterprise, or of a strictly philosophical enterprise?
We shall see, on the analysis of further arguments, that the im-
putation of an “oversight” is uncalled for since the second hy-
pothesis (to be specified) is the more plausible one.

“Society” itself is presently defined as “a number of individ-
uals connected by interaction.” But at the same time, Simmel
seems to suggest that it is only the sum total of these interactions,
without the individuals. For a more explicit statement, we must
look elsewhere {Soziologie, Ch. 1):

“ ‘Society’ is, first^/the -complex -oftsocietalized individuals, the
societally formed human material, as it constitutes the whole
historical reality. Secondly, however, ‘society’ is also the sum

virtue of which individuals are
transftin^^^fecisely, into ‘society’ in the first sense. . . .

Society/'||yii,’in the sense that is of use to soc 4 ologyr>is either

Introduction xxxi

the,absj£act. general concept of aJULthese forms — the genus whose
species they are — or it is their sum* operating at a particular
time.” «

Thus even here, we do not find an ui^mbiguous statement but
must simply conclude that Simmel leans toward the second defi-
nition, without clearly deciding in favor of it.pr suggesting what
use the first might have. In his studies (as against hh theoretical
statements), he appears to be no clearer, but likewise only to
tend toward the second; yet in regard to his studies, the question
of defining “society” is practically irrelevant.

[b] SOCIOLOGY

In Sect. 2, on (the abstract character of sociology, Simmel
comes back to the problem of establishing a science of sociology
in the face of the observationvthat “nqan in all aspects of his life
and action is determined ly;, the fact that he is"^ social being.”
Does this not, he asks (as is maintained by that “exaggerated”
notion of “society” which was mentioned earlier by him) — does
this not reduce all sciences of man to mere parts of the science
of social life? Since Simmel is convinced that the “special social
sciepces” witt continue no matter how sociology may develop,
the answer can only be negative. Hence, in order to establish
sociology as a science which is yet no utopian “master science,”
a different route must be taken.

[c] SOCIOLOGY AS A METHOD

Simmel suggests this route by calling attention to the “so-
ciological viewpoint” — in his words, to the recognition of
“societal production,” that is, the social explanation (or inter-
pretation) of historical phenojnena. This explanation histori-
cally superseded ^explanations in terms of production I>y in-
dividuals and by divine interference. To act on the knowledge
(or interpretation) that historical phenomena are social prod-
ucts, is to view them in a new light, is to adopt a new method
for studying them — in short, is to institute a new method for
“the historical disciplines and . . . the human studies in gen-
eral.” This method is “sociology.” Sociology

xxxii Introduction

yields possibilties of solution or of deeper study which may be
derived from fields of knowledge contentually quite different
(perhaps) from the field of the particular problem under in-
vestigation.

An inspection of the three examples which illustrate the
application of this method suggests that it consists in the ab-
straction.of. certain elements from historical reality, and in their
recombination for specific study. (Note particularly the end of
the second example.) In the instances given, these elements
are, first, the effect of a mass upon the individual; second, readi-
ness for sacrifice (and other attitudes) found in religious devo-
tion but associated not only with religious groups; and, third,
generalized attitudes toward the world (here, individualism as
against concentration upon uniformities). Obviously, these ele-
ments, the objects of sociological abstraction, are, in some sense,
heterogeneous. What they have in common is clarified, though
only indirectly, by recalling the historical role of sociology men-
tioned before: all three examples reflect “societal production.”
Their common features are further illuminated by Simmel’s
statements concerning the problem areas of sociology.

[d] “general” sociology

The first “problem area,” resulting in the articulation of
“general sociology,” is introduced by the proposition that hu-
man life may be considered from three (or possibly more) stand-
points: objective, individual (subjective), and social. That the
last of these, the social standpoint, is not perfectly clear, is no
objection, according to Simmel, “for it is a characteristic of
the human mind to be capable of erecting solid structures,
while their foundations are still insecure.” And from the im-
mediately following examples of sociological investigations
(fall of the Roman Empire, relation between religion and eco-
nomics in the great civilizations, etc.), it appears that his
methodology is propaedeutic rather than specific (which may
be one implication of his remark on “solid structures” vs. “in-
secure foundations”). To grasp Simmel’s position in another
frame of reference: he has not been able to objectify his atti-

Introduction xxxiii

tude toward sociology, or toward the sociologically relevant
world. He himself comes close to making this point in the fol-
lowing passage from Soziologie (especially in the^ parts here
italicized):

“If I myself stress the wholly fragmentary, incomplete char-
acter of this book, I do not do so in order to protect myself, in
a cheap manner, against objections to this character. For when
measured by the ideal of objective perfection, the selection of
the particular problems and examples contained in this work
doubtless presents a haphazard character. Yet if this character
should strike one\as a defect, this would only go to prove that
I have not been able to clarify the fundamental idea of the pres-
ent volume. For according to this idea, nothing more can be at-
tempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an
infinitely long road — the pretension of any systematic and defin-
itive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection
can here be obtained by the individual student only in the sub-
jective sense that he communicates everything he has been able
to see*'

The nature of the “sociological problems in the narrower
sense of this term,“ on which Simmel continues the discussion,
is another indication of the merely propaedeutic or program-
matic character of his sociology as methodology. One of these
more narrowly sociological problems belongs to the general
question of whether sociology, in the course of investigating his-
torical phenomena, can hope to establish laws.^® Another prob-
lem is that of group power; and a third is constituted by the
“value relations between collective and individual conduct, ac-
tion, and though t“ — a phrase which, in the next chapter, turns
out to have anticipated a treatise on (chiefly) group character-
istics as compared with individual characteristics,\the distinction
(within the individual)^ ^f private and group aspects, and “mass
psychology*' or “collective behavior*’ (in contemporary termi-
nology). What, then, in brief, is “general sociologyP’^iihmel an-
swers (but only in the subsequent discussion of “pure or formal
sociology’’): the study “of the whole of historical "life insofar as
it is formed societally.’’

xxxiv Introduction

[e] “formal” sociology

The second problem area and kind of sociology, “pure” or
"formal” sociology, investigates “the societal forms themselves,”
which make “society (and societies) out of the mere sum of liv-
ing men.” Examples of such “forms” are

“superiority and subordination, competition, division of labor,
formation of parties, representation, inner solidarity coupled
with exclusiveness toward the outside.”

These and similar forms, Simmel points out, may be exhibited
by the most diverse groups; and, the same interest may be real-
ized in very different forms. He subsumes “groups” and “inter-
ests,” together, under the category of “content,” which is sharply
contrasted with that of “(societal) form” or “sociation.”

In terms of its subject matter, “formal” sociology

“is not a special science, as . . . [sociology] was in terms of the
first problem area. Yet in terms of its clearly specified way of
asking questions, . . . [sociology] is a special science even here.”

The implication seems to be that “formal” and “general” sociol-
ogy have different kinds of subject matter, and for this reason
are special sciences in different senses of the term.

[f] “philosophical” sociology

The discussion of “philosophical sociology,” the third and
last kind, begins with a treatment of the philosophical dimen-
sions of science (including the social sciences), but then leads
to the surprising conclusion that

“sociology . . . emerges as the epistemology of the special social
sciences, as the analysis and systematization of the bases of their
forms and norms.” **

And likewise, it seems problematical to call the inquiry into the
metaphysical (rather than epistemological) ramifications of so-
ciological study, “philosophical sociology.” For, the discussion
refers to a topic which is hardly suggested by this name: it would
more accurately be designated as “an inquiry into the nature of
reality suggested by the study of social phenomena” or, briefly.

Introduction xxxv

as “ontology on the occasion of social phenomena.” And the con-
fusion is increased by the fact that only the first three sections
of Ch. 4, “an example of philosophical sociology/’ constitute an
ontological discussion, while the major part is a study in intel-
lectual history. To a careful reader of the last paragraph in Sect.
3 of that chapter, however, it may appear that Simmel’s road to
ontology is intellectual history, in the sense of ontological in-
duction from history or in a sense even closer, once more, to
Dilthey (or even to Hegel). Does Simmel suggest that there is no
philosophy of history other than sociology?

It is important to elucidate the problems raised by these ob-
scurities, surprises, and inconsistencies — the last among the
problems here proposed for clarification. All the puzzles that
have been noted are interrelated, and can be redefined, if not
solved, together.

[g] simmel’s sociology as the expression of an attitude

But what is the value of Simmel’s conception of sociology
given in the Grundfragen, a work written by him (according to
von Wiese and Becker)

“when he waS already suffering greatly from the illness which re-
sulted in his death, and . . . [which] must be regarded as an
unsuccessful attempt to popularize his theories?”

And worse: the methodological statements in Soziologie (pub-
lished long before that illness) are no clearer, as the few quota-
tions from that work have probably shown; and Simmel ad-
mitted some lack of clarity by his insistence, in both works, upon
the idea of “insecure foundations.” Yet the question is rhetori-
cal: the study of Simmel is worth our effort — provided we real-
ize that Simmel’s vagueness derives from an attitude, and that
this attitude is of great importance and can be clarified by
analysis.

[h] simmel’s problems

A clue to an understanding of Simmel’s sociology is furnished
by the suggestion that Simmel did not succeed in objectij^ing
his attitude.®^ Or, to set this idea into an even broader fraine-

xxxvi Introduction

work: he confronts the student of all of his philosophy with the
problem of the nature of attitude, on the one hand, and of
validity, on the other, and of their relation. In the course of
articulating his attitude, Simmel may have come to find the study
of ‘‘sociology'' fascinating, because it helped his own articulation
and clarification. In his pursuit of particular topics within this
study, he made numerous finds that are objective or scientific,
and are there for the sociologist to ponder or delight in, whether
or not he be plagued by problems of attitude or of the philo-
sophical implications of his pursuit. Some pages even in Part
One, but especially the subsequent Parts, bear witness to this.
But the “foundations" were “insecure"; and Simmel's inquiry
was not articulated even to the point of his asking in what the
insecurity consisted, by what he was worried. The problems
stated in the foregoing appraisal may thus be interpreted as im-
portant and closely interrelated grounds of his worry: the nature
and “kinds" of sociology, and the nature of society, of “form,"
and of “content."

The first of these implies almost all others. It is: what “way
of asking questions" was sociology for Simmel? It is close to the
modern concern with “social structure"; one does justice to a
great portion of Simmel's sociology by saying that he attempted
to throw light on the structure of society. But his very definitions
of “society" indicate what portions of his sociology are not caught
by this interpretation: he wavered, as we have seen, between the
inclusion and the exclusion of the individuals connected by in-
teraction. (And it may also be noted that he failed to distinguish
between “society" and “group," or to show that no such distinc-
tion is required.) The fact that one of the admittedly central
concepts of sociology remains vague, suggests that its clear-cut
definition was not central to Simmel nor, therefore, to his sociol-
ogy. Perhaps he was too much engrossed in a way of grasping
the world to find the questions whose answers would have clari-
fied the issue.

[i] THE “socialization OF THE SPIRIT" VS. SOCIOLOGY AS A METHOD

An important component of this way of grasping the world
within the framework of his sociology, was what he conceived

Introduction xxxvii

to be '^sociol ogy as a method/* Our attention, he seems to say,
has so insistently and constantly been called to the usefulness of
investigating and interpreting historical affairs sociologically,
that if we would understand them, we no longer can afford to
do without the sociological viewpoint. And it is true that the
sociological perspective has penetrated, for the last half century
and, in a wider sense, for much longer, not only the social sci-
ences (as Simmel pointed out that it might), but also the humani-
ties. But to emphasize this viewpoint, Simmel noted, is not the
same as to establish sociology as a special discipline. He did not
note, however, that his emphasis itself is part of that modem at-
titude which is interested (and often in a metaphysically not
disinterested manner) in socializing the spirit: in conceiving
of mind as a product, or by-product, of society, in locating, trac-
ing, and finding mind in society.®^ But Simmel did not want to
socialize the spirit: he wished (half-heartedly in his sociology
and wholeheartedly elsewhere) to preserve its autonomy. He in-
sisted that the realms of the objective and of the individual are
coordinate with the social realm; and he may also have wanted
to save the spirit by finding “subject matter’’ for sociology — for
otherwise, its subject matter might become the whole world.

[j] “general” vs. “formal” sociology

But his first attempt at establishing a subject matter failed:
it is difficult to distinguish the sociological method from the
first “kind of sociology” proper, “general sociology,” whose sub-
ject matter is “the whole of historical life insofar as it is formed
societally.” Throughout his discussion of sociology as a method
and of sociology's first “problem area” or “subject matter” (re-
sulting in the postulation of “general sociology”), Simmel de-
fines neither — and yet, the reader may well be fascinated by
Simmel's attitude (or, as Sorokin put it in a derogatory fashion,
by “a talented man”).

In comparison with his discussions of the sociological method
and of general sociology, his “formal” sociology — ^which has
drawn the greatest attention and has aroused the greatest con-
troversy — is in fact a successful thrust in the direction where his
worries must lead him to seek sociological subject matter: the

xxxviii Introduction

“societal forms themselves.” But why did Simmel insist that
“general” sociology and “formal” sociology are not special dis-
ciplines in the same sense of the term? Assuming that we know
what to understand by “history,” on the one hand, and by the
“sociological viewpoint,” on^the other, the two can be easily
distinguished: “ge neral” sociology . Ja .Qnlv-a. way oLlooking at
history £or its subject matter), only a method of handling it
(v^ereby the method interferes with the subject matter of his-
tory as much as any method with any subject matter) — ^whereas
“formal” sociology is not a method but a special science with its
own subject mattS, ”the' Torms of sociation” (arul with a
method). BiifTof Simmel, this was hot so simple, because he
thought “general sociology,” too, had its subject matter (“his-
torical life insofar . . .”), while “formal sociology” did not: he
took method for subject matter in the first instance, and did the
reverse in the second.

The reason may be that in his ambivalent attitude toward
the socialization of the spirit, he hesitated to throw the whole
world, that is, any subject matter, open to the sociological ap-
proach. If so, he did not here apply his knowledge (and his in-
sistence on it) that sociology, like any other science, proceeds by
abstraction. Did Simmel fear sociology might abstract too much,
might, as it were, “pre-empt” the spirit? In one of his essays, re-
flecting upon the sadness of ruins, he suggested that

“the collapse strikes us as nature’s revenge of the violation which
the spirit, by producing a form in its own image, has perpetrated
upon it. . . . The balance between nature and spirit, which the
building itself presented, shifts in favor of nature. This shift
becomes a cosmic tragedy.” *•*

Was he overpowered, too, not by nature,*® but by the “socializa
tion of the spirit” itself?

[k] THE “societal FORMS”

His Kantian heritage probably prevented him from seeing
“forms” as subject matter because they are merely “injected”
into social life. Perhaps if he had been clearer in regard to the
nature of science, he might have been content to say that subject

Introduction xxxix

matter is whatever a science studies. But perhaps he was aware of
his uncertainty concerning what “formal” sociology was designed
to study; at any rate, whether aware or not, he actually was not
clear in regard to the nature of the “forms.” Again, if he came
upon them out of his ambivalence, it is understandable that he
should not have been; in addition, his own achievements in his
sociological studies proper (his “solid structures”) may well have
made him feel that he could afford a merely cursory treatment of
the definition and of the methodological and philosophical status
of the “forms.” To the student of Simmel, in any event — since
“general sociology” turned out to be a program of a method only
— the notion of “form” is the most promising methodological
or philosophical contribution toward the establishment of so-
ciology as a science.

Despite the relatively numerous discussions of the “forms,”
the concept has yet to be specified in a satisfactory manner. To
do so requires a painstaking collection and juxtaposition of all
passages in which Simmel employs the term,®® and the subse-
quent formulation of a definition which does justice to all of
them, in a way to be determined by the study itself. This is
clearly beyond the scope of the present interpretation. But there
is one sense ^vhich probably all of Simmel’s usages of “form”
have in common, although it has not been noted in the litera-
ture; and unfortunately, it is neither as specific as it might be,
nor is it capable of answering many pertinent questions. It is
“form” understood as that element which, among the elements
relevant to a particular inquiry as well as to the general view-
point of sociology, is relatively stable — as against “content”
which, with the same specifications, is relatively variable.*®

[ 1 ] THE RELATION OF SIMMEL’s PHILOSOPHICAL TO
HIS SOCIOLOGICAL CONCERNS

The chief question in regard to S immel’s “philosophical s o-
c iology” co ncerns t he reason which led him to designate it as
“t he episfemologv of the social sciences. ” Reading the pages
which lead from his statements on. the philosophical dimensions
of the social sciences to this designation, one is impressed by a
non sequitur. Perhaps it may be resolved by suggesting that the

xl Introduction

sociological grasp of the world tem£ted Simmel to ennoble, to
* *s piHmS^i ze7^oaoIoiy by elevating it to the rank of epistemo-
logical inquiry.®! Also, his statement that ‘‘individual’* and “so-
ciety” are “the only sociological themes that have thus far been
realized,” may indicate his wish to reserve sociology for the
task of checking both stagnation and the premature articulation
of other themes. If so, he gave “philosophical sociology” a second
role, in addition to that of social epistemology and ontology,
namely, the role of general philosophy of the social sciences.

These arguments may make Simmel’s leaps into philosophy
less surprising. But there is the further fact that Simmel hardly
went beyond the programmatic announcement of his epistemol-
ogy and ontology into actual inquiries in these fields, neither in
his Soziologie nor in his Grundfragen,^^ The significance of this
merely negative fact\is greatly increased b)\the positive fact that
he did call the last chapter of Grundfragen (Part One, Ch. 4, in
this volume) an “example of p hilosophi cal sociology.” while it
is predominantly in intellectual history, rather than in

epistemology or ontology. This positive fact, ^long with the
propositions of the preceding arguments, makes it plausible to
suspect Simmel’s philosophical concerns to. be lio more deeply
related to his sociological concerns \^than was necessary for the
production of his programmatic statement — and not deeply
enough to enforce it.

§ 5 . The Methodological and Philosophical Importance
of SimmeVs Sociology

This whole introduction, practically, has been an attempt to
evoke an image of Simmel’s significance^ The reader’s attention
is called particularly to the paragraph preceding [a] in Sect. 4
above, the most explicit relevant passage. A succinct concluding
statement seems in order.

Irrespective of his “insecure foundations,” Simmel has given
us penetrating analyses of sociological problems. To repeat, since
these are almost entirely matters to delight in, they have not been
reviewed here; and the tool for their review is scientific proce-
dure as ordinarily understood, and no more. They not only make
up the bulk of Simmel’s work in sociology, as well as of this book.

Introduction xli

but will also be the chief attraction to most readers, and they are,
furthermore, h is most imp ortant contribution to„ sociology as a
science.

But the historian and philosopher of sociology, rather than
the sociologist proper, will have reason for wonder: although
there is hardly a logical connection between Simmels general
statements on sociology (for instance, his threefold subdivision
of the field) and his topical statements (for instance, his discus-
sion of the metropolis), nevertheless, since both types of state-
ments come from the same person, there must be some psycho-
logical connection between them. While no attempt has been
made here to trace this connection, the two mental sets which
may account for the two respective kinds of statements have
been suggested: wqny and creativity. Yet the main topic has
been an analysis of the '‘worries’': from them, it is submitted,
Simmel wrested sociology as the scientific study of social life by
means of the heuristic construct of “societal forms.” This con-
struct, along with related constructs, especiaUy “interaction,”
has contributed (for reasons which may be no more scientific
than is the origin of “form” itself) to other constructs that are
still in the center of contemporary sociological thought, are still
(among other things) articulations of the sociological attitude.
Among these are “social process,” “processes” and “types of
interaction,” “social structure,” “social relations,” “social sys-
tem.” ^

But Simmel (it has been suggested) was most profoundly im-
portant on another count. There is a more recent viewpoint than
the sociological attitude, although it is closely related to it; per-
haps it is a later phase of the “so cial ization of the spirit.” It is
embodied in that fumbling branch of sociology itself that goes
by the name of “s ociol ogy of knowledge.” Should this branch
grow and exemplify as unquestioned an attitude as sociology
does now, then Simmel, because of his very confusion, might
fully come into his own: he might emerge, not as the exemplifier
of creativity, which to some he must have been as a speaker, but
as the incarnation of the scope, the dangers, and the potentiali-
ties, not yet foreseeable, of the “socialization of the spirit” itself.
If such a time comes, sociologists may have to collaborate with
“social ontologists” and with philosophers of history and of sci-

xlii Introduction

ence; and a new appraisal of our intellectual efforts and of their
functions may be the intent or result (or only the result) of such
a collaboration.

Notes

(Capital letters refer to Appendices below. Names refer to authors
of works listed in A, B, E; titles without indication of author refer
to works by Simmel listed in B, G, or D; numbers are page references.
Items preceded by [*] were not available for inspection at the time
of writing,)

1. Tagger, 37; Ludwig, 412; Flexner, 108. Cf, also Fechter, 53-54.

2. Simmel, “The Stranger'* (Part V, Ch. 3, below).

3. The only biographical sketch: Spykman, xxiii-xxix (source:
Simmel's widow). Only-published letters: Weber, 382-383, 384-385,
386-387, Practically nothing of Simmel's possessions was salvaged
when his son and family left Nazi Germany. Attempts are being
made to gather what scattered remains may turn up.

4. Sources: Acknowledgements; Spykman.

5. For an illuminating description of the generally slow uni-
versity career in the Germany of the Kaiser: Max Weber, “Science as
a Vocation" (1918), in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, tr., ed.,
and with intr. by H. H, Gerth and C. Wright Mills, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 129-156, esp. 129-134.

6. Hurwicz; the last quotation (198) is taken (though not quite
exactly) from Frischeisen-Kohler, 36. Hurwicz is trying to point to
“Jewish elements" in SimmePs jhgught. SimmePs parents, baptized
Jews, baptized the child a Protestant; later Simmel left the church
without, however, joining a synagogue. He must have taken his
Jewishness for granted, although he never wrote about the Jews
except, here and there, sociologically. Cf. Fischer, 46: “And if — as
has been said repeatedly — it appears strange that a man of non-
Germanic blood found the hitherto most profound insights into the
Germanic way of art, then I want to say only that all cognition pre-
supposes, or includes, a being-different, a setting-oneself-off, and
that, for this very reason the Semitic thinker, at whom people like
to look askance, was capable of circumscribing the German spirit in

Introduction xliii

art and philosophy more easily than others can who live and work
in it,** Needless to say, this passage illustrates a well-known variety
of anti-Semitism.

7. An allusion to this episode in Hurwicz, 197.

8. Spykman, xxv.

9. B.

10. c.

11. “Aus einer Aphorismensammlung,*' Der Kunstfreund, Zeit-
schrift der Vereinigung der Kunstfreunde, 2: 284-286, June, 1914;
‘‘Aus dem nachgelassenen Tagebuche*' (first published in Logos,
8:121-151, 1919-1920, as *‘Aus Georg Simmels nachgelassenem Tage-
buch,” which in turn was a reprint of many of the aphorisms pub-
lished in the Kunstfreund), 1-46; “Bruchstiicke und Aphorismen"
at the end of Simmel's long essay on love (“t)ber die Liebe"'), 100-123;
the fragments at the end of his essay on the actor ("Zur Philosophic
des Schauspielers**), 260-265; and the fragments rounding out his
study of naturalism (‘'Zum Problem des Naturalismus*'), 297-304; all
in Simmel, Fragmente und Aufsdtze; also ‘*Aus Georg Simmels
nachgelassner Mappe ‘Metaphysik’.”

12. Utitz, 12, 8.

13. See also, e.g., Part I, Ch. 1, Sect. 4a, below. — Cf. Delbos in
Mamelet, iv: Siijimel '‘evidently gets the greatest pleasure from pur-
suing the collaboration between intelligence and things . . Or,
in a negative version, Lessing, 336, in the pun for which he humor-
ously apologizes: “Quae non sunt simulo. (Was nicht ist wird ersim-
melt.)"' (Things that don't exist I simmelate.)

14. Diary excerpts in Fragmente und Aufsdtze, 1-46 (see n. 11
above). The filing-away is suggested by the title of Gertrud Simmel's
contribution to the Buber volume (B, no. 23, also cited in n. 11
above): “From Georg Simmel’s Posthumous Folder, ‘Metaphysics’.”
— At a party in his home, Simmel noted that his wife didn't fill his
tea cup properly and asked her why. Gertrud Simmel, who was tall,
answered that she hadn't noticed this from her height. “Now I
understand,” Simmel replied, ‘‘why the Lord God doesn't fill the
cups to the briml” — In conversation with another person, he inter-
rupted himself, wonderingly: ‘‘Isn’t it something strange that one
should be no less than oneself?” (“Ist es nicht etwas Merkwiirdiges,
kein Geringerer als man selbst zu sein?”) — “That Bergson is more
important than I, may well be; but what I can't see is that I should

xliv Introduction

be less important than he,** (Fechter, 55.) — ‘‘Thinking hurts/* (“Den-
ken tut weh/*) — The following utterance may be apocryphical:
“She has a great past ahead of her** (said of a young lady Simmel had
met).

15. From SimmeFs diary (cited in preceding n.), 35, 37, 20, 39, 4,
4, respectively.

16. Simmel wrote some newspaper articles on current social
questions, e.g., *“Die Bauernbefreiung in Bohmen** (1894), *“Der
Militarismus und die Stellung der Frauen** (1894), *“Soziale Medizin*'
(1897), ♦“tJber die Zurechenbarkeit perverser Verbrecher** (1904),
as well as several anonymous pieces. For bibliographical references,
see Rosenthal-Oberlaender. See ibid,, and B, for relevant items con-
cerning Simmel’s interest in, and literary activities in behalf of,
Rodin, Bergson, and above all, Stefan George.

17. “Deutschlands innere Wandlung** (a speech delivered in
Strasbourg, November, 1914), in: Der Krieg und die geistigen Ent-
scheidungen, 12, 13, 20, 21, 27, 28, respectively. — The fourth passage
quoted is presumably referred to by Joel, 247, when he writes of
SimmeFs “love for his people which now [during the war] he felt
so deeply that he, the thinker, wanted to keep all reasons out of it.*'
JoeFs manner of reference shows more than approval, whereas here,
the suggestion is made that Simmel was under the impact of war
excitement. The discrepancy presents the general problem of ap-
praising divergent interpretations. knew Simmel personally,
for perhaps twenty-five years {ibid,, 242), and stood under the impres-
sion of his recent death; the present writer did not know Simmel.
In the meantime, furthermore, there has been a second world war
and an increase in insight into the possible ramifications of such
words as were quoted of Simmel. But these considerations only
throw light on different valuations in whose terms the difference
in interpretation may be understandable. The test of preferability
of one to another interpretation is coherence with other aspects of
Simmel. Joel, because of his personal friendship with Simmel, prob-
ably was more certain of his image than the present writer can be;
but it is also possible that in the particular case at issue he was
swayed by more ephemeral impressions, deriving from the point in
time at which he wrote, than this writer is. (For an interpretation of
SimmeFs intellectual activity during the war, which is considerably
closer to the one here presented than JoeFs is, see Utitz, 9.)

Introduction xlv

i8. “Die Krisis der Kultur“ (1916), in: DerKrieg und die geistigen
Entscheidungen, 64, 63, respectively.

jg. “Die Idee Europa“ (1915? See Rosenthal-Oberlaender, no.
189), ibid., 67-72; Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur, ein Vortrag . —
As an example of SimmeVs moral criticism, see, e.g., his sermon to
the wealthy, exhorting them to buy war bonds: “Eine Fastenpredigt:
Von dem Opfer der Wohlhabenden.“

20. Weber, 387.

21. Ibid., 391.

22. Gertrud Simmel, 221.

23. Including most of what Mamelet understands by “le relativ-
isme de Georg Simmel,“ and in full cognizance of Troeltsch's critique
of Simmel. (See also Kracauer, 331-332, on Simmel’s *'Kerngedanke**)
Hence, also, there is no contradiction in Mandelbaum's counting
Simmel (as a philosopher of history) among the “counter-r^Zfl^lt;^^^^."

24. A proposition worked out, though not in the largest perspec-
tive, by Mamelet, through an exposition of SimmeFs major works
up to 1914.

25. Frischeisen-Kohler, 36-37.

26. See, e.g., Hauptprobleme der Philosophie, Ch. I. Also, Mame-
let, Ch. X.

27. Utitz, 4i«i

28. Ibid., 19 — Beginnings of a “negative determination*' may be
found in Kracauer, 307-308.

29. Cf. Kurt H. Wolff, “The Sociology of Knowledge: Emphasis
on an Empirical Attitude," Philosophy of Science, 10:111-114, 1943.

30. See the first 13 entries in D.

31. At one point. Small calls Simmel “one of the keenest thinkers
in Europe" (Albion W, Small, General Sociology, Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1905, p. 498); he admittedly used some of
Simmel's concepts (ibid., passim), as did Park and Burgess, in whose
work Simmel is referred to more often than any other author (see
index). Characteristic comments: “Simmel has made a brilliant
contribution in his analysis of the sociological significance of ‘the
stranger' " (286); “Georg Simmel has made the one outstanding con-
tribution to a sociology or, perhaps better, a social philosophy of the
city in his paper ‘The Great City and Cultural Life' " [D, no. 15]
(331); “Georg Simmel, referring, in his essay on ‘The Stranger,' to
the poor and the criminal, bestowed upon them the suggestive title

xlvi Introduction

of 'The Inner Enemies* ** (559); "Simmel has made the outstanding
contribution to the sociological conception of conflict** (639); "Sim-
mel's observation upon subordination and superordination is almost
the only attempt that has been made to deal with the subject from
the point of view of sociology** (720).

32. For references to Spykman*s and Sorokin's works, see Ap-
pendix A. Sorokin wrote: “From a purely methodological stand-
point, SiianieFs sociological method lacks scientifeg^lllg^ I must
express my complete disagreement with Dr. R. Park's or Dr. Spyk-
man's high estimation of the sociological method of Simmel. Besides
the above logical deficiency [due to the ambiguous term ‘form*: ibid,,
501-502], Simmel's method entirely lacks either experimental ap-
proach, quantitative investigation, or any systematic factual study
of the discussed phenomena. In vain one would look in his work for
a systematic method like that of the Le Play school, or of the methodo-
logical principles of social sciences developed by A. Cournot . . .;
or some principles like those of H. Rikkert [^ic] and W. Windelbandt
[5eV] concerning the classification of sciences . . .; or something like
Max Weber's method of the ‘ideal typology*; or Gabon's, Pearson's,
and A. TchuproflE's quantitative methods of investigation; or even
a simple, careful and attentive study of the facts he is talking about.
All this is lacking. What there is represents only the speculative
generalization of a talented man, backed by the ‘method of illustra-
tion* in the form of two or three facts incidentally taken and often
one-sidedly interpreted. Without Simmel's talent the same stuff would
appear poor. Simmel's talent saves the situation, but only as far as
talent compensates for lack of scientific methodology. Under such
conditions, to call the sociologists ‘back to Simmel,' as Drs. Park and
Spykman do, means to call them back to a pure speculation, meta-
physics, and a lack of scientific method. Speculation and metaphysics
are excellent things in their proper places, but to mix these with the
science of sociology means to spoil each of those sciences." (502, n. 26.)
(See von Wiese's critique of Sorokin's critique: Systematic Sociology
On the Basis of the Beziehungslehre and Gebildelehre of Leopold von
Wiese, adapted and amplified by Howard Becker, New York: Wiley;
London: Chapman and Hall, 1932, pp. 44-47.)

33. For Abel reference, see A; for Wiese-Becker (consult index),
see preceding n. See E for a list of discussions of Simmel in English,

34. Especially in and through The American Journal of Sociology

Introduction xlvii

(published since July, 1895). In the second issue, a group of “advising
Editors” of three American and seven foreign sociologists, among
them Simmel, was announced. Cf. Ethel Shanas, “The American
Journal of Sociology through Fifty Years,” American Journal of
Sociology, 50: 523, May, 1945. (On the beginning of the Journal, cf.
also Bernhard J. Stern, ed., “The Letters of Albion W. Small to Lester
F. Ward,” Social Forces, 12: 163-173 [1933]; 13: 323-340 [i935]J 15-
174-186 [1936], 305-327 [1937]. For European, especially German and
Austrian contacts by Ward, Ross, and several other early American
sociologists, see also Bernhard J. Stern, ed., “The Ward-Ross Cor-
respondence,” American Sociological Review, 3: 362-401 [1938]; 11:

593-605. 734-748 [1946]: 12: 703-720 [1947]: 13: 82-94 [1948]: 14:
88-119 [1949]-)

35. Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, a Study in
Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent Euro-
pean Writers [Durkheim, Pareto, M. Weber], New York and London:
McGraw-Hill, 1937 (reprinted, Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1949). —
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr.
Talcott Parsons, London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Scribner,
1930; From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (see n. 5 above); The
Theory of Social and Economic Organization, tr. A. M. Henderson
and Talcott Parsons, New York: Oxford University Press, 1947; On
the Methodolo^ of the Social Sciences, tr. and ed. Edward A. Shils
and Henry A. Finch, Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1949. Other transla-
tions are in preparation.

36. Cf. the short but suggestive remarks on this point by Robert
Schmid in his review of Loomis' translation of Tonnies, American
Sociological Review 6: 581-582, August, 1941.

37. See F for the detailed sources of the translations contained in
this volume, and G for a note on the translation itself.

38. Cf. Utitz's suggestion of an indexed edition of Simmel's
works (see passage to which n. 27 above refers).

39. See “Acknowledgements.”

40. Goethe (5th ed.), vii.

41. Cf. Vber sociale Differenzierung, 10-11. It should be noted
that no attempt is made here to present all of Simmel's views, even
upon one topic, in their chronological development. Some of his
very relevant writings, above all, “Das Problem der Soziologie”
([Schmollers] Jahrbuch fiir Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volks-

xlviii Introduction

wirtschaft im Deutschen Reich, VoL XVIII [1894]; for tr., see D,
no. 2), are not referred to at all. Furthermore, this attempt, not
made here, would also have to use many among Simmel’s primarily
non-sociological writings. The most successful and painstaking eflEort
of this sort, with reference to one particular theme, namely, “form,'*
is Steinhoff. — In Grundfragen, in formulating the individual as an
object of experience, Simmel does not raise the question whether it
is the only object of experience, nor does he reveal whether by
“object of experience’* he uses a synonym of some sort of “given.**
The two questions: why he does not, and what his givens are, promise
well for a study of Simmel, and are related to the questions raised
(earlier and below) in regard to such a study.

42. See also Part III, Ch. 4, Sect. 4 below. — The similarity of
Simmel’s and Dilthey’s conceptions is also seen, in the field of soci-
ology, by Simmel’s emphasis that Kant’s “nature** as the subject’s
Synthesis does not apply to “society,** to which the “synthesis’* is
intrinsic: Soziologie, 22. — ^The quotation is from Hodges, 133, from
Dilthey’s “Ideen fiber eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psycho-
logic** (1894). It is characteristic of Simmel not to refer to Dilthey
or to this particular work (with which he was most likely acquainted
if only because Dilthey taught at Berlin from 1882 to his death in
1911), much less to analyze similarities and differences of their re-
spective positions. This (systematic) analysis is one of the many tasks
that result from a study of Simmel’s work and remain yet to be
done. (Their conceptions of sociology itself were dissimilar, in spite
of Dilthey’s approval of Simmel's “sociology.** For reference to
Dilthey’s relevant statement, see A.)

43. Vber sociale Differ enzierung, 12.

44. In this particular case under discussion, Simmel’s earlier
position (in Vber sociale Differenzierung, quoted) was more scienti-
fic except that, as a scientist, he could not have pronounced judg-
ment (of agreement) on the metaphysical status of atomism. It
should be noted that in the chronologically intermediate Soziologie
(1908), Simmel does not directly tackle the problem, but at one
point (13) speaks of “individual existences — the real bearers of con-
ditions.** But this, probably, is intended as a scientific statement,
which also seems the significance of the passage in Grundfragen
following upon the propositions discussed in the text above. There,
Simmel in effect suggests that even from an empirical standpoint

Introduction xlix

one must note that * ‘individual” is no more “real” than “society”;
that is (one may put it), both are equally heuristic concepts. (For an
avowedly epistemological treatment of the question, “how is society
possible,” see the ''Exkurs*' by this title which is a part of the first
chapter of Soziologie. For a somewhat unsatisfactory translation of
this *'Exkurs,** see reference in D, no. 13.)

45. Soziologie, 8, 9. (For Small's translation, see item referred to
in D, no. 12, pp. 301, 303.)

46. This is a favorite observation, but may also stem from another
realm of inquiry not otherwise studied by Simmel, namely, ontol-
ogy, in particular, the ontology of mind. See the following quota-
tion {Soziologie, 13): “After all, in intellectual matters it is not too
rare — and, when it comes to the most general and the most pro-
found problems, it is, as a matter of fact, the rule — that (what by an
unavoidable metaphor is called) the foundation is less secure than
the superstructure erected upon it. And thus, scientific practice, too,
especially when it works in new areas, cannot do without a certain
measure of merely instinctive advance. Only later is it possible to
become fully conscious of the motives and norms of that stage and
to penetrate it conceptually. Certainly, scientific work must never
be satisfied solely by such vague, instinctual procedures. . . . Yet,
one would ^condemn science to sterility if, before new tasks, one
made a completely formulated methodology the condition of taking
even the first step.” (Cf. Bentley, Relativity in Man and Society, 158,
297.) This is elaborated in the following footnote (of which only the
beginning is quoted here): “If we compare the infinite complexity
of socal life with the initial crudeness which the concepts and
methods employed to master it intellectually are only now begin-
ning to overcome, we realize that it would be sheer megalomania to
expect, at this juncture, radical clarity of questions and correctness
of answers. It seems to me more dignified to admit this from the
start (since by doing so, at least a decisive first step can be taken)
than to pretend definitiveness, and thereby to jeopardize even the
pioneering significance of our efforts.”

47. Ibid. (This is the remainder of the footnote quoted in the
preceding n. Italics added.)

48. At this point, Simmel merely poses the question, and thereby,
clearly, entertains Comtean and Spencerian ideas (without, how-
ever, committing himself). He investigated the question more fully.

1 Introduction

though not in an ultimately satisfactory way, and with changing
positions, in his studies in the philosophy of history. For discussion,
see above all Troeltsch; also Spykman, Book I, Ch. V; Mandelbaum,
Collingwood.

49. It will be remembered that shortly before this passage, Sim-
mel gives as examples of ‘‘special social sciences,’' “the study of
economics and of institutions, the history of morals and of parties,
population theory, and the discussion of occupational differentia-
tion.” The intent of Simmel’s argument, or its surprising character,
would presumably not be changed if, instead of these, the currently
more customary disciplines of economics, sociology of institutions,
and other social sciences or parts of them were named.

50. Wiese-Becker, 83, n. 5.

51. In interpreting the development of recent philosophy,
Heinemann locates Simmel (along with several other thinkers) on
the road that led “from life to existence” (not in the sense of con-
temporary “existentialism”). This is one way of alluding to Simmel’s
attitude.

52. Quite irrespective of his confession to Troeltsch (Troeltsch,
573, n. 309) that in his last years “sociological questions” “no longer
interested him.”

53. Among important American exemplifiers of this attitude,
Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead in the social
sciences, and John Dewey in philosophy, may be recalled.

54. Simmel, “Die Ruine,” in Philosophische Kultur (2nd ed.),
128, 125. (The same passage is quoted by Utitz, 15, who adds: “This
cosmic tragedy is ultimately also the tragedy of Simmel.”)

55. As Wiese-Becker suggest in the passage quoted earlier.

56. Here the closing sentence of Steinhoff’s excellent study of
“forms” is relevant (259): “That which is lacking in his work, the
‘grouping’ and the ‘systematization’ of the relationships analyzed,
remains as a task for those who are willing to continue his work.”

57. Steinhoff (most important); Knevels, 51-57; also Abel, esp.
19-49; Bougie, 345-346; Heberle, 250-255, 264-267; Mamelet, 9, 38,
47, 209-210; Salomon, 607-608; Sorokin; Spykman, Book I and
“Conclusion”; Wiese-Becker, 705-708; and others.

58. For beginnings of this, see Steinhoff and Knevels.

59. Except, possibly, by Salomon: cf. his section title (604), “A
Theory of Social Invariables: Georg Simmel.”

Introduction li

6 0. “Form** as the relatively stable variable in the context of
inquiry and viewpoint is not a specifically sociological referent.
Among the many questions which the equation leaves unanswered
are: (i) (a) What is the ontological status of “form?” (b) Is “form”
to be so defined as to make its ontological status irrelevant; and if
so, is “form” merely a heuristic, methodological construct? (c) If the
latter, what is the empirical referent that is methodologically con-
structed into “form?” (2) How can sociology be so transformed as to
make all these questions unnecessary? (3) What is the relevance to
the “socialization of the spirit” of the two respective sociologies
implied — one to which the above questions regarding forms are
relevant, and the other to which they are not? — It should be noted
that all these questions must be asked, also, in regard to the comple-
mentary notion of “content” (or the like). Finally, the whole in-
quiry should likewise extend to an investigation, comparative and
synthesizing, of current concerns with “structure” and “function.”
Cf. discussions in cultural anthropology and social psychology and,
more specifically, the works by Sorokin, Bennett-Tumin, and Davis
cited at the end of E; and Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and
Social Structure, Toward the Codification of Theory and Research
(Glencoe, 111 .: Free Press, 1949), Parts I and II.

61. This is very similar to Karl Mannheim's fascination by the
“sociology of knowledge” and to his attempt at establishing it as
epistemology. See, e.g., his Ideology and Utopia, An Introduction to
the Sociology of Knowledge, (tr. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils,
New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), esp. 256-275; for criticism, see
esp. Virgil G. Hinshaw, Jr., “The Epistemological Relevance of
Mannheim’s Sociology of Knowledge,” Journal of Philosophy, 40:
57-72, 1943, and “Epistemological Relativism and the Sociology of
Knowledge,” Philosophy of Science, 15: 4-10, 1948.

62. Part I, last paragraph, below.

63. A further striking similarity between Simmel and Mannheim.

Appendices

[a] LITERATURE ON SIMMEL

On the whole, the literature on Simmel fails to convey the unique-
ness of his mind, nor does it — with hardly more than one exception

lii Introduction

— possess the creative anxiety, excitement, and thrill which were
typical qualities of his own work. Below is a selective, roughly classi-
fied list. (Items preceded by [*] were not available for inspection at
the time of writing.)

The one certain exception is Gertrud Kanterowicz's short ‘‘Vor-
wort*' to SimmeFs posthumous Fragmente und Aufsdtze (edited by
her), v-x. But see also Emil Utitz, ‘‘Simmel und die Philosophie der
Kunst," Zeitschrift fiir Aesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft,
XIV: 1-41, 1920; Max Frischeisen-Kohler, “Georg Simmel," Kant-
Studien, 24: 1-51, 1920; Karl Joel, “Georg Simmel, ein Nachruf,"
Neue Rundschau (XXXter Jahrg. d. Freien Biihne), 1919, Band 1,
pp. 241-247 (rhapsodic; obituary; the year, incidentally, is errone-
ously indicated as 1911 in Rosenthal-Oberlaender); and perhaps
Albert Mamelet, Le Relativisme philosophique chez Georg Simmel,
Paris: Alcan, 1914 (pp. ix, 215; preface by Victor Delbos), although
this is to a large extent expository.

Sociology: Theodore Abel, Systematic Sociology in Germany, A
Critical Analysis of Some Attempts to Establish Sociology as an
Independent Science, New York: Columbia University Press, 1929,
Chapter I, “The Formal Sociology of Georg Simmel,“ pp. 13-49;
Nicholas J, Spykman, The Social Theory of Georg Simmel, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1925 (pp. xxix, 297; incidentally, Spyk-
man, on p. xxvii, gives SimmeFs death date erroneously as Sept. 28 —
though, on p. xxiii, correctly, as Sept. 26); Pitirim Sorokin, Con-
temporary Sociological Theories, New York and London: Harper,
1928, pp. 489-491, 495-507; Rudolf Heberle, “The Sociology of
Georg Simmel: The Forms of Social Interaction, “ in: Harry Elmer
Barnes, ed.. An Introduction to the History of Sociology, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1948, pp. 249-273; C. Bougie, “Les
sciences sociales en Allemagne: G. Simmel,“ Revue de Metaphysique
et de morale, 2: 329-355, 1894; Maria Steinhoff, “Die Form als
soziologische Grundkategorie bei Georg Simmel, “ Kolner Viertel-
jahrshefte fur Soziologie, 4: 215-259, 1925; Walter Frost, “Die Sozio-
logie Simmels,” Latvijas Universitates Raksti (Acta Universitatis
Latviensis), XII: 219-313, 1925, XIII: 149-225, 1926 (largely exposi-
tory, to introduce Simmel “abroad"; inferior to the preceding, esp.
Steinhoff); Paul Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie
(1897), I (no more published), Leipzig: Reisland, 3rd and 4th ed.,
1922, pp. 149-151; Wilhelm Dilthey, “Soziologie" (1904), Einleitung

Introduction liii

in die Geisteswissenschaften (1883), Wilhelm Diltheys Gesammelte
Schriften, L Band, Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 3rd ed., 1933, pp.
420-422 (tr. in H. A. Hodges, Wilhelm Dilthey, An Introduction,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1944, pp. 139-141; see also id,,
60-61; Dilthey’s rejection of all sociology, but not of Simmers).

History: R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1946, pp. 170-171, 174-175; Maurice Mandelbaum, The
Problem of Historical Knowledge, An Answer to Relativism, New
York: Liveright, 1938, pp. 101-119, 166-170; Ernst Troeltsch, Der
Historismus und seine Probleme, Tubingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1922,
pp. 572-596. — Philosophy: Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich, Die
deutsche Philosophie des XIX, Jahrhunderts und der Gegenwart
(“Friedrich Ueberwegs Grundriss der Philosophie, Vierter Teil,“
12th ed.), Berlin: Mittler, 1923, pp. 467-471; Frischeisen-Kohler;
Siegfried Kracauer, “Georg Simmel," Logos, 9: 307-338, 1920-21;
Mamelet; Max Adler, Georg Simmels Bedeutung fur die Geistes-
geschichte, Wien, Leipzig: Anzengruber, 1919 (pp. 44); Wilhelm
Knevels, Simmels Religionstheorie, ein Beitrag zum religidsen Prob-
lem der Gegenwart, Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1920 (pp. vi, 107; see esp.
Part II); Fritz Heinemann, Neue Wege der Philosophie, Leipzig:
Quelle und Meyer, 1929, pp. 230-250; *Herwig Muller, Georg Simmel
als Deuter jund Fortbildner Kants, Dresden: Dittert, 1935; Thomas
A. Vannatta, A Study in Polarities in the Writings of George Simmel
(unpubl. Ph.D. diss.), Columbus: Ohio State University, 1948 (pp.
163, v). — Art: Utitz.

Briefly appraising: Ernst Bernhard, “Georg Simmel als Soziologe
und Sozialphilosoph,“ Die Tat, 5: 1080-1086, January, 1914; *Jonas
Cohn, in: Deutsches biographisches Jahrbuch, 1917-1920 (Berlin,
1928), 326-333; Herman Schmalenbach, “Simmel," Sozialistische
Monatshefte, Vol. 52, Jahrg. 25: 283-288, March 24, 1919 (obituary);
Aloys Fischer, “Georg Simmel (geb. 1. Marz 1856 [5/c], gest. 27. [sic]
September 1918)," Deutscher Wille, 32. Jahrgang, 2. Oktoberheft,
pp. 43-47 (October, 1918; anti-Semitic); Theodor Lessing, “Georg
Simmel, Betrachtungen und Exkurse" (1912-13), in his: Philosophie
als Tat, Gottingen: Otto Hapke, 1914, pp. 303-343 (self-and- Jew-
accusing); Fritz Hoeber, “Georg Simmel, Der Kulturphilosoph
unserer Zeit," Neue Jahrbiicher fur das klassische Altertum, Ge-
schichte und deutsche Literatur, 41: 475-477, 1918 (obituary).

Anecdotal, impressionistic, journalistic: Emil Ludwig, “Simmel

liv Introduction

au£ dem Katheder/* Die Schaubuhne, Vol. X, Nr. 15: 411-413, April
9, 1914 (on the occasion of SimmeFs leaving the University of Berlin,
after almost thirty years of teaching, for the University of Stras-
bourg); Theodor Tagger, “Georg Simmel," Die Zukunft, Vol.
LXXXXIX, Jahrg. XXIII, Nr. 2, pp. 36-41, October 10, 1914 (on
same occasion); Elias Hurwicz, “Simmel als jiidischer Denker,** Neue
jiidische Monatshefte, III, Nrs. 9-12, pp. 196-198, February 10-25,
March 10-25, ^9^9*

Reminiscent: (Abraham Flexner,) I Remember, the Autobiog-
raphy of Abraham Flexner, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940, p.
108 (Berlin student days); J. Loewenberg, “Problematic Realism,**
in: George P. Adams and Wm. Pepperell Montague, eds., Contem-
porary American Philosophy: Personal Statements, London: Allen
and Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1930, Volume 2, pp. 80-81 (Sim-
mePs inspiration of the pragmatic element in Loewenberg*s philos-
ophy); Paul Fechter, Menschen und Zeiten, Begegnungen aus funf
Jahrzehnten, Giitersloh: Bertelsmann, 1948, pp. 52-56; Marianne
Weber, Lebenserinnerungen, Bremen: Jobs. Storm, 1948, pp. 375-
409 (more on Gertrud Simmel, SimmePs wife, than on Simmel him-
self).

[b] THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SIMMEL*S WRITINGS

The only bibliography existing to date is Erich Rosenthal and
Kurt Oberlaender, “Books, Papers, and Essays by Georg Simmel,'*
American Journal of Sociology, 51: 238-247, November, 1945 (252
items, not counting ii incomplete and doubtful ones; there are also
24 items on Simmel). The following items may be added, although
the list remains incomplete; e.g., various translations of SimmePs
works (among them into Polish and Spanish), discussion speeches,
etc., are known to be missing. The items are given in as complete
a form as is available. Most of them were communicated by Dr. Else
Simmel from an as yet unpublished bibliography compiled by Kurt
Gassen (Greifswald) and Michael Landmann (Basel). (Items pre-
ceded by [*] were not available for inspection at the time of writing.)

1. *“Humanistische Marchen** (anonymous). Die neue Zeit, No.
49, 1891-92; (2) *“Etwas vom Spiritismus,** Vorwdrts, July, 1892; (3)
*“Weltpolitik** (anonymous). Die neue Zeit, No. 32, 1893-94; (4)
*“Frauenstudium an der Berliner Universitat,** Vossische Zeitung,
December 21, 1899; (5) ^Review of Joel, Philosophenwege, Die Zeit,

Introduction Iv

April 21, 1901; (6) * ‘‘Rodins Plastik und die Geistesrichtung der
Gegenwart,"' Berliner Tageblatt, September 29, 1902; (7) “De la re-
ligion au point de vue de la tWorie de la connaissance,'' Bibliotheque
du Congres International de Philosophie, II, Morale GenSrale, La
Philosophie de la Paix, Les Soci^tes d* Enseignement Populaire,
Paris: Colin, 1903, pp. 319-337; (8) *“Das Abendmahl Leonardo da
Vincis,*' Der Tag, 1905? (9) *“Psychologie der Diskretion," Der Tag,
September 2-4 (?), 1906; (10) *“Die Zukunft unserer Kultur," Frank-
furter Zeitung, April 14, 1909; (11) *“Brucke und Tiir," Der Tag,
September 15, 1909; (12) *“Beitrage zur Philosophie der Geschichte,"
Scientia, Vol. 6, 1909; (13) *“Nietzsches Moral," Der Tag, May 4,
1911; (14) *‘‘Goethe und die Frauen," St, Petersburger Montagsblatt,
463, 1912; (15) *‘‘t)ber Takt, Soziologie der Geselligkeit," Frank-
furter Zeitung, October 22, 1912; (16) *‘‘Goethe und die Jugend,"
Der Tag, October 4, 1914; (17) *‘‘Rembrandt und die Schonheit,"
Vossische Zeitung, December 25, 1914; (18) *‘‘Die Umwertung der
Werte: Ein Wort an die Wohlhabenden," Frankfurter Zeitung,
March 5, 1915; (19) *‘‘Individualismens Formen" (Danish), Specta-
tor, January 28, 1917; (20) ‘‘Eine Fastenpredigt: Von dem Opfer der
Wohlhabenden," Frankfurter Zeitung, March 18, 1917; (21) *‘‘Panta
rhei" (anonymous), Simplicissimus, August 28, 1917; (22) *‘‘t)ber
Verantwortlichkeit," Kalender (?), 1918; (23) ‘‘Aus Georg Simmels
nachgelassner Mappe ‘Metaphysik* " (intr. Gertrud Simmel), in:
Aus unbekannten Schriften, Festgabe fur Martin Buber zum 50.
Geburtstag, Berlin: Schneider, 1928, pp, 221-226; (24) Cultura fern-
enina y otros ensayos (‘‘Coleccidn Austral," No. 38), Buenos Aires-
Mexico: Espasa-Calpe Argentina, 1938 (2nd ed., 1939; 3rd ed., 1941,
PP- 153; contains ‘‘Cultura femenina," ‘‘Filosofia de la coqueteria,"
‘‘Lo masculino y lo femenino," and ‘‘Filosofia de la moda," i.e., the
second, third, fourth, and sixth essay of Rosenthal-Oberlaender, no.
252 [the last item in C], tr. by the same translators); (25) a series of
pseudonymous articles in Die Jugend.

[c] simmel's major works

Sociology: Vber sociale Differenzierung, sociologische und psy-
chologische Untersuchungen (‘‘Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche
Forschungen," Gustav Schmoller, ed., Zehnter Band, Erstes Heft),
Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1890, pp. vii, 147 (2nd ed., 1905);

Ivi Introduction

Philosophic des Geldes, Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1900 (2nd
ed., 1907; 3rd ed., 1920; 4th ed., Miinchen und Leipzig, 1922, pp.
xiv, 585; 5th ed., Miinchen, 1930); Soziologie, Untersuchungen iiber
die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot,
1908 (2nd ed., Miinchen und Leipzig, 1922; 3rd ed., 1923, pp. 578);
Grundfragen der Soziologie (“Sammlung Goschen,'* No. 101), Berlin
und Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1917 (2nd ed., 1920, pp. 103).

Philosophy of History: Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie,
Fine erkenntnistheoretische Studie, Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot,
1892 (2nd rev. ed., 1905; 3rd ed., 1907; 4th ed., Miinchen und Leip-
zig, 1922; 5th ed., 1923, pp. ix, 229); Das Problem der historischen
Zeit ('Thilosophische Vortrage veroffentlicht von der Kantgesell-
schaft,** No. 12), Berlin: Reuther und Reichard, 1916, pp. 31; Vom
Wesen des historischen Verstehens (“Geschichtliche Abende im
Zentralinstitut fiir Erziehung und Unterricht, Fiinftes Heft''), Ber-
lin: Mittler, 1918, pp. 31.

Ethics: Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, eine Kritik der
ethischen Grundbegriffe, Berlin: Hertz (Besser), Vol. I, 1892, pp.
viii, 467; Vol. II, 1893, pp. viii, 426 (2nd ed., Stuttgart und Berlin:
Cotta, 1904; 3rd ed., 1911).

General Philosophy: Philosophic des Geldes; Kant, Sechzehn
Vorlesungen gehalten an der Berliner Universitat, Leipzig: Duncker
und Humblot, 1904 (2nd ed., 1905; 3rd enl. ed., Miinchen und Leip-
zig, 1913; 4th ed., 1918; 5th ed., 1921; 6th ed., 1924, pp. vi, 266);
*Kant und Goethe (*‘Die Kultur, Sammlung illustrierter Einzel-
darstellungen," Cornelius Gurlitt, ed., Vol. X), Berlin: Marquardt,
1906, pp. 71 (2nd ed., Leipzig: Wolff, 1907; 3rd rev. ed., Kant und
Goethe; zur Geschichte der modernen Weltanschauung, 1916, pp.
117; 4th ed., 1918; 5th ed., Miinchen und Leipzig, 1924); Die Religion
(“Die Gesellschaft, Sammlung sozialpsychologischer Monographien,"
Martin Buber, ed., Vol. II), Frankfurt am Main: Riitten und Loen-
ing, 1906, pp. 79 (2nd rev. and enl. ed., 1912; 3rd ed. [9.-1 1. Tausend],
1922); Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, Ein Vortragszyklus, Leipzig:
Duncker und Humblot, 1907 (2nd ed., Miinchen und Leipzig, 1920;
3rd ed. [not contained in Rosenthal-Oberlaender], 1923, pp. vii,
192); Hauptprobleme der Philosophic (“Sammlung Goschen," No.
500), Leipzig: Goschen, 1910, pp. 175 (2nd ed., 1911; 3rd ed., 1913;
4th ed., Berlin und Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1917; 5th ed., 1920; 6th ed..

Introduction Ivii

1927); Goethe, Leipzig: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1913 (4th ed.,
1921; 5th ed., 1923, pp. vii, 264).

Philosophy of Art: Rembrandt, Ein kunstphilosophischer Ver~
such, Leipzig: Wolff, 1916 (2nd ed., 1919, pp. viii, 208).

Philosophy of Contemporary Civilization: Der Krieg und die
geistigen Entscheidungen, Reden und Aufsdtze, Miinchen und Leip-
zig: Duncker und Humblot, 1917, pp. 72 (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1920);
Der Konfiikt der modernen Kultur, ein Vortrag, ibid,, 1918 (2nd ed.,
1921, pp. 30; 3rd ed., 1926).

Metaphysics: Lebensanschauung, vier metaphysische Kapitel,
Miinchen und Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1918 (2nd ed., 1922,

pp- 239)-

There also exist several important collections of essays: Philo-
sophische Kultur, gesammelte Essais (“Philosophisch-soziologische
Biicherei,*' Vol. XXVII), Leipzig: Kroner, 1911 (2nd enl. ed., 1919,
pp. 295); Melanges de Philosophic relativiste. Contribution a la cul-
ture philosophique, tr. Alix Guillain (‘‘Biblioth^que de Philosophie
contemporaine’*), Paris: Alcan, 1912 pp. vi, 268; Zur Philosophie der
Kunst, philosophische und kunstphilosophische Aufsdtze (Gertrud
Simmel, ed.), Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1922, pp. 175; Fragmente und
Aufsdtze aus dem Nachlass und Veroffentlichungen der letzten Jahre-
(Gertrud Kantorowicz, ed.), Miinchen: Drei Masken Verlag, 1923,
pp. X, 304; *Cultura femenina y otros ensayos (Eugenio Imaz, Jose
R. Perez Bances, M. G. Morente, and Fernando Vela, trs.), Madrid:
Revista de occidente, 1934.

[d] SIMMEL's writings available in ENGLISH

The following is as complete a list of SimmePs writings available
in English as could be obtained (in chronological order of publica-
tion):

(1) “Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual Functions,”
International Journal of Ethics, III, No. 4, 490-507, July, 1893. Tr.
not indicated. (“This article is part of the second volume of the
author's ‘Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft which is shortly
to appear. The reader finds here hardly more than a general outline
of the original article. From want of space, it has been considerably
shortened without being able to consult the author.”)

(2) ”The Problem of Sociology,” Annals of the American Acad-

Iviii Introduction

emy of Political and Social Science, VI, No. 3, 412-423, November,
1895. Tr. not indicated.

(3) “Superiority and Subordination as Subject-Matter of Sociol-
ogy,“ The American Journal of Sociology, II, No. 2, 167-189, Septem-
ber, 1896; No. 3, 392-415, November, 1896. Tr. Albion W. Small.

(4) “The Persistence oLSocial Groups/' ibid,, III, No. 5, 662-698,
March, 1898; No. 6, 829-836, May, 1898; IV, No. 1, 35-50, July, 1898.
Tr. Albion W. Small.

(5) “A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value," ibid,, V, No. 5, 577-
603, March, 1900. Tr. not indicated. (“A fragment from a volume
entitled The Philosophy of Money to be published this year by
Duncker and Humblot, Leipzig. Translated for this journal from
the author's manuscript.")

(6) “Tendencies in German Life and Thought Since 1870," In-
ternational Monthly, V, No. 1, 93-111, January, 1902; No. 2, 166-184,
February, 1902. Tr. W. D. Briggs.

(7) “The Number of Members as Determining the Sociological
Form of the Group," The American Journal of Sociology, VIII, No.
1, i-46,“july, 1902; No. 2, 158-196, September, 1902. Tr. Albion W.
Small.

(8) “The Sociology of Conflict," ibid,, IX, No. 4, 490-525, Janu-
ary, 1904; No. 5, 672-689, March, 1904; No. 6, 798-811, May, 1904.
Tr. Albion W. Small.

(9) “Fashion," International Quarterly, 10, No. 1, 130-155, Octo-
ber, 1904. Tr. not indicated.

(10) “A Contribution to the Sociology of Religion," The Ameri-
can Journal of Sociology, XI, No. 3, 359-376, November, 1905. Tr.
W. W. Elwang.

(1 1) “The Sociology oi Secrecy and of Secret Societies," ibid,, XI,
No. 4, 441-498, January, 1906. Tr. Albion W. Small.

(12) “The Problem of Sociology," ibid,, XV, No. 3, 289-320, No-
vember, 1909. Tr. Albion W. Small. (“This is a portion of the first
chapter in Simmel's Soziologie, a brief notice of which appeared in
this Journal, Vol. XIV, p. 544. The translation is as literal as possible.
The notes, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. — Albion W.
Small.")

(13) “How is Society Po^ible?" ibid,, XVI, No. 3, 372-391, No-
vember, 1910. Tr. Albion W. Small. (“This is a translation of the
passage entitled, 'Exkurs iiber das Problem: Wie ist Gesellschaft

Introduction lix

moglich?' in SimmeFs Soziologie (pp. 27-45). Although I have often
argued (e.g.. General Sociology, pp. 183-85, 504-8, etc.) that the
term ‘society* is too vague to be made into an instrument of pre-
cision, I am glad to assist in getting a hearing for SimmeFs efforts to
prove the contrary. I have therefore done my best to render his essay
literally as far as possible, and in all cases faithfully. A.W.S.**)

(14) In: Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to
the Science of Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921:

(a) 322-327: “The Sociological Significance of the
‘Stranger*,** from: Simmel, Soziologie, 1908, pp. 685-
691;

(b) 356-361: “Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction,*'
from: id,, 646-651;

(These three passages were presumably translated by
Park and/or Burgess. Numerous other short transla-
tions contained in the book were taken from several
of SimmeFs writings listed above.)

(15) (a) “The Metropolis and Mental Life" [1902-03], Second-

Year Course in the Study of Contemporary Society

• (Social Science II), Syllabus and Selected Readings
(5th ed. [and subsequent eds.], Chicago: University of
Chicago Bookstore, September, 1936, pp. 221-238. Tr.
Edward A. Shils.

(b) Id,, Department of Sociology, The University of Wis-
consin, n.d,, mimeographed, pp. 10. Tr. H. H. Gerth
with the assistance of C. Wright Mills. (Used as Part
V, Ch. 4, below.)

(16) “The Sociology of Sociability," The American Journal of
Sociology, LV, No. 3, 254-261, November, 1949. Tr. Everett C.
Hughes. (The original, of 1910, is an earlier version of the original
rendered as Part I, Ch. 3, below.)

[e] DISCUSSIONS, IN ENGLISH, OF SIMMEL AS A SOCIOLOGIST

The following is, at least, the beginning of an alphabetical list
of discussions in English, most of them short, of Simmel as (wholly
or in part) a sociologist. (Book reviews are not included.)

lx Introduction

(1) Theodore Abel (see A). Next to Spykman's, this is the most
comprehensive treatment.

(2) S. P. Altmann, ‘‘SimmePs Philosophy of Money/' American
Journal of Sociology, 9: 46-68, 1903.

(3) Harry Elmer Barnes and Howard Becker, Social Thought
from Lore to Science, Boston: Heath [1938], Vol. II, 889-891.

(4) Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government, A Study of
Social Pressures, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908, pp.
472-476.

(5) » Relativity in Man and Society, New York: Putnam;

London: Knickerbocker, 1926, pp. 163-165, 306-310.

(6) — , “Simmel, Durkheim, and Ratzenhofer," American

Journal of Sociology, 32: 250-256, 1926. (Cf. Ch. XX in preceding
item.)

(7) Rudolf Heberle (see A).

(8) Floyd Nelson House, The Development of Sociology, New
York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1936, pp. 386-390.

^g) ^ xhe Range of Social Theory, a Survey of the Develop-

ment. Literature, Tendencies and Fundamental Problems of the
Social Sciences, New York: Holt, 1929. (Consult index.)

(10) Albert Salomon, “German Sociology," 586-614, in: Georges
Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore, eds., Twentieth Century Sociology,
New York: Philosophical Library, 1945, pp. 604-609.

(11) Pitirim Sorokin (see A).

(12) Nicholas J. Spykman (see A).

(13) A. Vierkandt, “Simmel, Georg," Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences, 14: 61.

(14) Wiese-Becker (see n. 32 above), esp. 705-708.

Among more recent American sociology texts, the following (in
chronological order) refer to Simmel more than bibliographically
(consult indices): R. M. Maciver, Society: A Textbook of Sociology,
New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937 (also: Maciver, Community,
a Sociological Study, London: Macmillan, 1917; Maciver and Charles
H. Page, Society: An Introductory Analysis, New York; Rinehart,
1949); Kimball Young, An Introductory Sociology, New York: Amer-
ican Book, 1939; Sociology: A Study of Society and Culture, ibid,,
1942 (see also his Social Psychology, New York: Crofts, 1944); John
Lewis Gillin and John Philip Gillin, An Introduction to Sociology,
New York: Macmillan, 1942; E. T. Hiller, Social Relations and

Introduction Ixi

Structures, A Study in Principles of Sociology, New York and Lon-
don: Harper, 1947; Pitirim A. Sorokin, Society, Culture, and Per-
sonality: Their Structure and Dynamics, New York and London:
Harper, 1947; John W. Bennett and Melvin M. Tumin, Social Life:
Structure and Function, New York: Knopf, 1948; Kingsley Davis,
Human Society, New York: Macmillan, 1949.

[f] SOURCES OF THE TRANSLATIONS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME

(1) Georg Simmel, Grundfragen der Soziologie {Individuum und
Gesellschaft) (“Sammlung Goschen,*' No. 101), Berlin und Leipzig:
Vereingung wissenschaftlicher Verleger, Walter de Gruyter 8c Co.,
1917, pp. 103. For the translation, the second edition (identical with
the first), of 1920, was used. The four chapters of this work have the
following original titles: “Das Gebiet der Soziologie,"' “Das soziale
und das individuelle Niveau (Beispiel der Allgemeinen Soziologie),”
“Die Geselligkeit (Beispiel der Reinen oder Formalen Soziologie),”
and “Individuum und Gesellschaft in Lebensanschauungen des 18.
und 19. Jahrhunderts (Beispiel der Philosophischen Soziologie)."*

(2) Georg Simmel, Soziologie, Untersuchungen iiber die Formen
der Vergesellschaftung (Sociology, Studies of the Forms of Societaliza-
tion), Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker 8c Humblot, 1908, pp. 782. For
the translation, the third, revised edition of 1923 (pp. 578) was used.
The following table of contents is supplemented by translations of
headings and by information concerning available translations or
their non-existence. Titles of portions contained in the present vol-
ume are printed in capital letters.

I. Das Problem der Soziologie (The Problem of Sociology, pp.
1-31). For translation, see D, no. 12.

Exkurs iiber das Problem: wie ist Gesellschaft moglich? (Note on
the Problem: How Is Society Possible? Pp. 21-30). For translation,
see D, no. 13.

II. DIE QUANTITATIVE BESTIMMTHEIT DER GRUPPE
(The Quantitative Determinateness of the Group, pp. 32-100), tr. as
Part II of the present volume. For translation of an earlier and
shorter draft, see D, no. 7. (For a summary, see Spykman, Book II,
Ch. III.)

III. UBER- UND UNTERORDNUNG (Superordination and
Subordination, pp. 101-185), tr. as Part III of the present volume.

Ixii Introduction

For translation of an earlier and much shorter draft, see D, no. 3.
(Cf. Spykman, Book II, Ch. I.)

EXKURS UBER DIE UBERSTIMMUNG (Note on Out-Vot-
ting, pp. 142-147), tr. as Part III, Gh. 3, Sect. 5. Not previously trans-
lated.

IV. Der Streit (Conflict, pp. 186-255). translation of an earlier
and shorter draft, see D, no. 8. (Cf. Spykman, Book II, Ch. 11 .)

V. DAS GEHEIMNIS UND DIE GEHEIME GESELLSCHAFT
(The Secret and the Secret Society, pp. 257-304), tr. as Part IV of the
present volume. For translation of an earlier and shorter draft, see
D, no. 11.

EXKURS UBER DEN SCHMUCK (Note on Adornment, pp.
278-281), tr. as Part IV, Ch. 3, Sect. 5. Not previously translated.

EXKURS UBER DEN SCHRIFTLICHEN VERKEHR (Note
on Written Communication, pp. 287-288), tr. as Part IV, Ch. 4, Sect.
3. Not previously translated.

VI. Die Kreuzung sozialer Kreise (The Intersection of Social
Circles, pp. 305-344). No translation existing. (Cf. Spykman, Book
II, Ch. VI.)

VII. Der Arme (The Poor, pp. 345-374). No translation existing.
EXKURS UBER DIE NEGATIVITAT KOLLEKTIVER VER-

HALTUNGSWEISEN (Note on the Negativity of Collective Modes
of Behavior, pp. 359-362), tr. as Part V, Ch. 2. Not previously trans-
lated.

VIII. Die Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe (The Self-Preser-
vation of the Social Group, pp. 375-459). For translation of an earlier
and much shorter draft, see D, no. 4. (Cf. Spykman, Book II, Ch. V.)

Exkurs iiber das Erbamt (Note on Hereditary Office, pp. 391-396).
No translation existing.

Exkurs fiber Sozialpsychologie (Note on Social Psychology, pp.
421-425). No translation existing.

EXKURS UBER TREUE UND DANKBARKEIT (Note on
Faithfulness and Gratitude, pp. 438-447), tr. as Part V, Ch. 1. Not
previously translated.

IX. Der Raum und die raumlichen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft
(Space and the Spatial Organization of Society, pp. 460-526). No
translation existing. (Cf. Spykman, Book II, Ch. IV.)

Introduction Ixiii

Exkurs liber die soziale Begrenzung (Note on Social Delimitation,
pp. 467-470). No translation existing.

Exkurs liber die Soziologie der Sinne (Note on the Sociology of
the Senses, pp. 483-493). For a partial translation, see D, no. 14b.

EXKURS UBER DEN FREMDEN (Note on the Stranger, pp.
509-512), tr. as Part V, Ch. 3. For an earlier translation, see D, No.
14a, above.

X. Die Erweiterung der Gruppe und die Ausbildung der Individ-
ualitat (The Enlargement of the Group and the Development of
Individuality, pp. 527-573). No translation existing. (Cf. Spykman,
Book II, Ch. VII.)

Exkurs liber den Adel (Note on Nobility, pp. 545-552). No trans-
lation existing.

Exkurs liber die Analogie der individualpsychologischen und
der soziologischen Verhaltnisse (Note on the Analogy of Individual-
Psychological and Sociological Conditions, pp. 565-568). No transla-
tion existing.

(3) Georg Simmel, “Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben“ (The
Large Cities [Metropoles] and Intellectual [Mental] Life), pp. 185-
206, in: Die Grossstadt, Vortrage und Aufsatze zur Stadteausstellung
von K, Bucher, F. Ratzel, G. v. Mayr, H. Waentig, G. Simmel, Th.
Petermanir und D. Schafer. Gehe-Stiftung zu Dresden, Winter 1902-
1903. Jahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung zu Dresden. Band IX. Dresden:
V. Zahn 8c Jaensch, 1903. For the translation used in the present vol-
ume, see D, no. 15b; for another translation, see D, no. 15a.

[g] A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

With the exception of the last chapter (cf. F, no. 3), all transla-
tions were made by the present writer. The attempt at utilizing ex-
tant renditions was abandoned, after some experimentation, as im-
practicable. The key term **Vergesellschaftung/* misleadingly ren-
dered as “socialization" by Small (cf. D) and Spykman, and literally
as “societalization" by Abel, has consistently been translated as “so-
ciation." A precedent for this is Wiese-Becker; see esp. p. 10, n. 11,
and pp. 113-114 and n. 6, on the different referents of their and Stuck-
enberg's “sociation," a term coined by the latter. (On this coinage, in
J. H. W. Stuckenberg, Introduction to the Study of Sociology, 1898,
pp. 126-127, cf. Barnes, ed., An Introduction to the History of SocioU

Ixiv Introduction

ogy, 806.) The other key term, *'Wechselwirkung/' literally “recipro-
cal effect, “ has been found to have in “interaction" its contextually
closest English equivalent, and has thus been translated throughout
the volume. The only place where this translation has been found
before is Bentley, Relativity in Man and Society, 353.

One of the most tangible changes wrought on Simmel's text is its
breakup into more manageable portions. The original sentences,
paragraphs, and chapters are considerably longer than are those of
this translation. Most sentences and paragraphs were broken up,
and most headings were added. Only those of the following portions
of the book are Simmel’s own: Parts I, II, III, IV; all chapters in
Parts I and V; Part II, Ch. 4, Sects. 2, 3, 4; Part III, Ch. 3, Sect. 5;
Part IV, Ch. 3, Sect. 5, and Ch. 4, Sect. 3.

In their “Preface" to From Max Weber, Gerth and Mills give an
excellent account of their translation. The interested reader is in-
vited to inspect that preface, thinking of Simmel rather than of
Weber, in order to have a fairly accurate idea of the English, in its
relation to the original German, that he finds in the following pages.

The Sociology of Georg Simmel

Part One

Fundamental Problems
of Sociology

Individual and Society

Chapter 1

The Field
of Sociology

THE FIRST DIFFICULTY

which arises if one wants to make a tenable statement about the
science of sociology is that its claim to be a science is not undis-
puted. Further, there is a chaotic multitude of opinions concern-
ing its contents and aims. There are so many contradictions and
confusions, that one doubts again and again whether one deals
with a scientifically justifiable problem at all here. The lack of
an undisputed and clear definition would not be so bad if it
were made up for by the existence of a certain number of specific
problems which are not, or not exhaustively, treated in other
disciplines and which contain the fact or concept of “society*'
as their common element and point of contact. They might be
too different from one another in content, orientation, and
method of solution to be treated as if they amounted to a homo-
geneous field of inquiry. Yet even then, they could at least find
a preliminary refuge under the heading of “sociology”; at least
superficially, it would be clear where to look for them. In such
a scheme, sociology would resemble technology, a tag quite legiti-
mately attached to an immense range of tasks whose understand-
ing and solution are not too greatly helped by the suggestion
(through the name “technology”) that they have some feature
in common.

§ 1 . Society and Knowledge of Society

Such a tenuous tie among heterogeneous problems might hold
out the promise of their unity at a deeper level. Yet even this
tenuous tie appears impossible because of the problematic char-

4 The Field of Sociology

acter of the only concept that holds these problems together —
‘"society.” In fact, all existing denials of the possibility of sociol-
ogy as a science arise on the basis of this problematic character.
It is remarkable that the denials either minimize or exaggerate
this concept. Existence, we hear, is an exclusive attribute of
individuals, their qualities and experiences. “Society,” by con-
trast, is an abstraction. Although indispensable for practical pur-
poses and certainly very useful for a rough and preliminary sur-
vey of the phenomena that surround us, it is no real object. It
does not exist outside and in addition to the individuals and the
processes among them. After each of these individuals is investi-
gated in his natural and historical characteristics, nothing is left
by way of subject matter for a particular science.

For this sort of critique, “society,” obviously, is too slight
a matter to constitute a field of science. For another kind of
critique, however, it is too big: for on the other hand it is said
all that men are and do occurs within society, is determined by
society, and is part of its life; there is no science of man that is
not science of society. The science of society thus ought to replace
the artificially compartmentalized special disciplines, historical,
psychological, and normative. It ought to make it evident that
it is sociation which synthesizes all human interests, contents, and
processes into concrete units. But, obviously, this definition,
which wants to give sociology everything, takes as much away
from it as did the first conception that left it nothing. For juris-
prudence and philology, political science and literary criticism,
psychology and theology, and all the other disciplines that have
divided up the study of human life among themselves, will cer-
tainly continue to exist. Nothing is gained by throwing their sum
total into a pot and sticking a new label on it: “sociology.”

The trouble is that the science of society, in contrast to other
sciences that are well established, is in the unfortunate position
of still having to prove its right to exist. Yet this is fortunate, too,
for sociology's struggle for existence is bound to lead to a clarifi-
cation of its basic concepts (which is good and necessary in itself)
and to the establishment of its specific manner of investigating
reality.

Let us grant for the moment that only individuals “really”
exist. Even then, only a false conception of science could infer

Society and Knowledge of Society 5

from this “fact'* that any knowledge which somehow aims at
synthesizing these individuals deals with merely speculative ab-
stractions and unrealities. Quite on the contrary, human thought
always and everywhere synthesizes the given into units that
serve as subject matters of the sciences. They have no counterpart
whatever in immediate reality. Nobody, for instance, hesitates
to talk of the development of the Gothic style. Yet nowhere is
there such a thing as “Gothic style," whose existence could be
shown. Instead, there are particular works of art which along
with individual elements, also contain stylistic elements; and the
two cannot be clearly separated. The Gothic style as a topic of
historical knowledge is an intellectual phenomenon. It is ab-
stracted from reality; it is not itself a given reality. Innumerable
times, we do not even want to know how individual things be-
have in all detail: we form new units out of them. When we
inquire into the Gothic style, its laws, its development, we do not
describe any particular cathedral or palace. Yet the material that
makes up the unit we are investigating — “Gothic style" — we gain
only from a study of the details of cathedrals and palaces. Or, we
ask how the “Greeks" and the “Persians" behaved in the battle
of Marathon. If it were true that only individuals are “real,"
historical cognition would reach its goal only if it included the
behavior ofxeach individual Greek and each individual ‘Persian*'
If we knew his whole life history, we could psychologically under-
stand his behavior during the battle. Yet even if we could manage
to satisfy such a fantastic claim, we would not have solved our
problem at all. For this problem does not concern this or that
individual Greek or Persian; it concerns all of them. The notion,
“the Greeks" and “the Persians," evidently constitutes a'^totally
different phenomenon, which results from a certain intellectual
synthesis, not from the observation of isolated individuals. To be
sure, each of these individuals was led to behave as he did by a
development which is somehow different from that of every other
individual. In reality, none of them behaved precisely like any
other. And, in no one individual, is what he shares with others
clearly separable from what distinguishes him from others. Both
aspects, rather, form the inseparable unity of his personal life.
Yet in spite of all this, out of all these individuals we form the
more comprehensive units, “the Greeks" and “the Persians."

6 The Field of Sociology

Even a moment’s reflection shows that similar concepts con-
stantly supersede individual existences. If we were to rob our
cognition of all such intellectual syntheses because only indi-
viduals are “real,” we would deprive human knowledge of its
least dubious and most legitimate contents. The stubborn asser-
tion that after all there exist nothing but individuals which
alone, therefore, are the concrete objects of science, cannot pre-
vent us from speaking of the histories of Catholicism and Social
Democracy, of cities, and of political territories, of the feminist
movement, of the conditions of craftsmen, and of thousands of
other synthetic events and collective phenomena — and, there-
fore, of society in general. It certainly is an abstract concept. But
each of the innumerable articulations and arrangements covered
by it is an object that can be investigated and is worth investiga-
tion. And none of them consists of individual existences that are
observed in all their details.

This whole consideration, however, might be due, simply, to
an imperfect grasp of the matter at issue. It might merely be a
(perhaps) necessary preliminary that would, potentially or ac-
tually, be overcome by a more intimate knowledge of the indi-
viduals as the ultimately concrete elements. Yet if we examine
“individuals” more closely, we realize that they are by no means
such ultimate elements or “atoms’*, of the human world. For the
unit denoted by the concept “individual” (and which, as a matter
of fact, perhaps is insoluble, as we shall see later) is not an object
of cognition at all, but only of experience. The way in which
each of us, in himself and in others, knows of this unit, cannot
be compared to any other way of knowing. What we know about
man scientifically is only single characteristics. They may exist
once, or they may stand in a relation of reciprocal influence to one
another; but each of them requires its special investigation and
derivation, which leads to innumerable influences of the physi-
cal, cultural, personal environment — influences that come from
everywhere and extend infinitely in time. Only by isolating and
grasping them and by reducing them to increasingly simple,
covert and remote elements do we approach what is really “ulti-
mate,” that is, what is^real in the rigorous sense of the word. Thi.®
“real” alone must’ form the basis ior any higher intellectual syn
thesis. Color molecules, letters, particles of water indeed “exist”

Society and Knowledge of Society 7

but the painting, the book, the river are syntheses: they are units
that do not exist in objective reality but only in the consciousness
which constitutes them.\But what is more, even these so-called
elements are highly synthetic phenomena. It is, therefore, not
true that reality can be attributed only to properly ultimate units, '
and not to phenomena in which these units find their forms. Any
form (and a form always is a synthesis) is something added by a
synthesizing subject. Thus, a conception that considers only in-
dividuals as “real” lets' what should be considered real get out of
hand. It is perfectly arbitrary to stop the reduction, which leads
to ultimately real elements, at the individual. For this reduction
is interminable. In it, the individual appears as a composite of
single qualities, and destinies, forces and historical derivations,
which in comparison to the individual himself have the same
character of elementary realities as do the individuals in compari-
son to society.

In other words, the alleged realism that performs this sort of
critique of the concept of society, and thus of sociology, actually
eliminates all knowable reality. It relegates it into the infinite
and looks for it in the realm of the inscrutable. As a matter of
fact, coglfltion must be conceived on the basis of an entirely
different structural principle. This principle is the abstraction,
from a given complex of phenomena, of a number of hetero-
geneous objects of cognition that are nevertheless recognized as
equally definitive and consistent. The principle may be expressed
by the symbol of different distances between such a complex of
phenomena and the human mind. We obtain different pictures
of an object when we see it at a distance of two, or of five, or of
ten yards. At each distance, however, the picture is “correct” in
its particular way and only in this way. And the different distance
also provides different margins for error. For instance, if the
minute detail of a painting that we gain at very close range were
injected into a perspective gained at a distance of several yards,
this perspective would be utterly confused and falsified. And yet
on the basis of a superficial conception, one might assert that the
detailed view is “truer” than the more distant view. But even
this detailed perception involves some distance whose lower limit
is, in fact, impossible to determine. All we can say is that a view
gained at any distance whatever has its own justification. It can-

8 The Field of Sociology

not be replaced or corrected by any other view emerging at an-
other distance.

In a similar way, when we look at human life from a certain
distance, we see each individual in his precise differentiation
from all others. But if we increase our distance, the single indi-
vidual disappears, and there emerges, instead, the picture of a
“society'* with its own forms and colors — a picture which has its
own possibilities of being recognized or missed. It is certainly no
less justified than is the other in which the parts, the individuals,
are seen in their differentiation. Nor is it by any means a mere
preliminary of it. The difference between the two merely con-
sists in the difference between purposes of cognition; and this
difference, in turn, corresponds to a difference in distance.

The right to sociological study thus is not in the least en-
dangered by the circumstance that all real happenings only occur
in individuals. Yet the independence of sociology from this cir-
cumstance can be argued even more radically. For it is not true
that the cognition of series of individual occurrences grasps
immediate reality. This reality, rather, is given to us as a complex
of images, as a surface of contiguous phenomena. We articulate
this datum — ^which is our only truly primary datum — into some-
thing like the destinies of individuals. Or we reduce its simple
matter-of-factness to single elements that are designed to catch it
as if they were its nodal points. Clearly, in either case there occurs
a process which we inject into reality, an ex-post-facto intellectual
transformation of the immediately given reality. Because of con-
stant habit, we achieve this almost automatically. We almost
think it is no transformation at all, but something given in the
natural order of things. Actually, this transformation is exactly
as subjective — but also, since it yields valid cognition, exactly
as objective — as is the synthesis of the given under the category
of society. Only the particular purpose of cognition determines
whether reality, as it emerges or is experienced in its immediacy,
is to be investigated in a personal or in a collective frame of
reference. Both frames of reference, equally, are “standpoints."
Their relation to one another is not that of reality to abstraction.
Rather, since both are interpretations, though different ones,
both are detached from “reality," which itself cannot be the im-
mediate subject matter of science. It becomes amenable to

Society and Knowledge of Society 9

cognition only by means of categories such as, for instance,
'‘individual,” or “society.”

Nor is the concept of society invalidated by the fact that, if
we look at it from still another angle, we must admit that human
existence is real only in individuals. If the concept “society” is
taken in its most general sense, it refers to the psychological
interaction among individual human beings. This definition
must not be jeopardized by the difficulties offered by certain
marginal phenomena. Thus, two people who for a moment look
at one another or who collide in front of a ticket window, should
not on these grounds be called sociated. Yet even here, where
interaction is so superficial and momentary, one could speak,
with some justification, of sociation. One has only to remember
that interactions of this sort merely need become more frequent
and intensive and join other similar ones to deserve properly the
name of sociation. It is only a superficial attachment to linguistic
usage (a usage quite adequate for daily practice) which makes us
want to reserve the term “society” for permanent interactions
only. More specifically, the interactions we have in mind when
we talk about “society” are crystallized as definable, consistent
structures such as the state and the family, the guild and the
church, social classes and organizations based on common
interests.

But in addition to these, there exists an immeasurable num-
ber of less conspicuous forms of relationship and kinds of inter-
action. Taken singly, they may appear negligible. But since in
actuality they are inserted into the comprehensive and, as it were,
official social formations, they alone produce society as we know
it. To confine ourselves to the large social formations resembles
the older science of anatomy with its limitation to the major,
definitely circumscribed organs such as heart, liver, lungs, and
stomach, and with its neglect of the innumerable, popularly un-
named or unknown tissues. Yet without these, the more obvious
organs could never constitute a living organism. On the basis of
the major social formations — the traditional subject matter of
social science — it would be similarly impossible to piece together
the real life of society as we encounter it in our experience. With-
out the interspersed effects of countless minor syntheses, society
would break up into a multitude of discontinuous systems. Socia-

10 The Field of Sociology

tion continuously emerges and ceases and emerges again. Even
where its eternal flux and pulsation are not sufficiently strong to
form organizations proper, they link individuals together. That
people look at one another and are jealous of one another; that
they exchange letters or dine together; that irrespective of all
tangible interests they strike one another as pleasant or un-
pleasant; that gratitude for altruistic acts makes for inseparable
union; that one asks another man after a certain street, and that
people dress and adorn themselves for one another — the whole
gamut of relations that play from one person to another and that
may be momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious,
ephemeral or of grave consequence (and from which these illus-
trations are quite casually chosen), all these incessantly tie men
together. Here are the interactions among the atoms of society.
They account for all the toughness and elasticity, all the
color and consistency of social life, that is so striking and yet so
mysterious.

The large systems and the super-individual organizations that
customarily come to mind when we think of society, are nothing
but immediate interactions that occur among men constantly,
every minute, but that have become crystallized as permanent
fields, as autonomous phenomena. As they crystallize, they attain
their own existence and their own laws, and may even confront
or oppose spontaneous interaction itself. At the same time, so-
ciety, as its life is constantly being realized, always signifies that
individuals are connected by mutual influence and determina-
tion. It is, hence, something functional, something individuals
do and suffer. To be true to this fundamental character of it,
one should properly speak, not of society, but of sociation. So-
ciety merely is the name for a number of individuals, connected
by interaction. It is because of their interaction that they are
a unit — ^just as a system of bodily masses is a unit whose reciprocal
effects wholly determine their mutual behavior. One may, of
course, insist that only these masses are true “realities,** and that
their mutually stimulated movements and modifications are
something intangible, and thus only secondary realities, so to
speak, for they have their locus only in the concrete bodies them-
selves. The so-called unit merely is the synopsis of these ma-
terially separated existences: after all, the impulses and forma-

The Abstract Character of Sociology 11

tions they receive and produce remain in them. In the same
sense one may insist that ultimately it is the human individuals
that are the true realities. But this adds nothing to our argument.
In accordance with it, society certainly is not a ‘‘substance,” noth-
ing concrete, but an event: it is the function of receiving and
effecting the fate and development of one individual by the
other. Groping for the tangible, we find only individuals; and
between them, only a vacuum, as it were. Later, we shall consider
the consequences of this conception. At any rate, if it leaves
‘‘existence” (more strictly speaking) only to individuals, it must
nevertheless accept the process and the dynamics of acting and
suffering, by which the individuals modify one another, as some-
thing ‘‘real” and explorable.

§ 2 . The Abstract Character of Sociology

Under the guidance of its particular conception, any science
extracts only one group or aspect out of the totality or experi-
enced immediacy of phenomena. Sociology does so, too. It acts
no less legitimately than does any other science if it analyzes
individual existences and recomposes them in the light of its
own conception. Sociology asks what happens to men and by
what rules they behave, not insofar as they unfold their under-
standable individual existences in their totalities, but insofar
as they form groups and are determined by their group existence
because of interaction. It treats the history of marriage without
analyzing particular couples; the principle underlying the or-
ganization of offices, without describing a ‘‘typical day” at a
particular office; the laws and consequences of the class struggle,
without dealing with the development of a particular strike or of
particular wage negotiations. The topics of its researches cer-
tainly arise in a process of abstraction. But this feature does not
distinguish sociology from such sciences as logic or economic
theory. They, too, under the guidance of certain conceptions
(such as cognition and economics, respectively), produce, out of
reality, interrelated phenomena that do not exist as something
experienceable but whose laws and evolution they discover.

Sociology thus is founded upon an abstraction from con-
crete reality, performed under the guidance of the concept of

12 The Field of Sociology

society. We have already noted the invalidity of the accusation
of unreality, which was derived from the assertion of the exclu-
sive reality of individuals. But this realization also protects our
discipline from the exaggeration that I have mentioned, earlier,
as an equally grave danger for its existence as a science. To
repeat: since man in all aspects of his life and action is determined
by the fact that he is a social being, all sciences of him are re-
duced to parts of the science of social life. All subject matters of
these sciences are nothing more than particular channels, as it
were, in which social life, the only bearer of all energy and of
all significance, flows. I have shown that all this conception does
is to yield a new common name for all the branches of knowledge
that will continue to exist anyway, unperturbed and autono-
mous, with all their specific contents and nomenclatures, tenden-
cies and methods. Nevertheless, this erroneous exaggeration of
the concepts “society” and “sociology” is based upon a fact of
great significance and consequence. For, the recognition that
man in his whole nature and in all his manifestations is de-
termined by the circumstance of living in interaction with other
men, is bound to lead to a new viewpoint that must make itself
felt in all so-called human studies.^

As recent a period as the eighteenth century explained the
great contents of historical life — language, religion, the forma-
tion of states, material culture — essentially, as inventions of single
individuals. Where the reason and interests of the individual
were not adequate explanations, transcendental forces were re-
sorted to. The “genius” of the single inventor, incidentally,
served as a link between the two explanatory principles: it sug-
gested that the known and understandable forces of the indi-
vidual did not suffice to produce the phenomenon in question.
Thus, language was either the invention of individuals or a
divine gift; religion (as a historical event), the invention of
shrewd priests or divine will; moral laws were either inculcated
into the mass by heroes or bestowed by God, or were given to
man by “nature,” a no less mystical hypostasis. These two insuffi-

1 **Geist€sxvissenschaften/* Unless otherwise indicated, this term will always be
rendered as “human studies,’* a usage which follows Hodges. (Cf. H. A. Hodges,
Wilhelm Dilthey: An Introduction, New York: Oxford University Press, 1944, esp.

p. 157.)— Tr.

Sociology as a Method 13

cient alternatives were replaced by the notion of societal produc-
tion, according to which all these phenomena emerge in inter-
actions among men, or sometimes, indeed, are such interactions.
They cannot be derived from the individual considered in iso-
lation. In addition to the two earlier possibilities, therefore, we
now have a third: the production of phenomena through social
life. This production occurs in a twofold manner. In the first
place, there is the simultaneity of interacting individuals which
in each produces what cannot be explained on the basis of him
alone. In the second place, there is the succession of generations.
The inheritance and tradition of this succession inseparably fuse
with the acquisitions made by the individual himself: social man,
in contrast to all subhuman animals, is not only a successor but
also an heir.

§ 3 . Sociology as a Method

The notion of societal production lies, as it were, somewhere
between the notions of purely individual and transcendental
production. It has provided all human studies with a genetic
method, with a new tool for the solution of their problems,
whether they^concern the state or church organization, language
or moral conditions./Sociology thus is not only a science with its
own subject matter that is differentiated, by division of labor,
from the subject matters of all other sciences^ It also has become
a method of the historical disciplines and of the human studies
in general/ Yet in order to use it, these sciences by no means need
abandon their own particular viewpoints. They need not be-
come mere parts of sociology, as that fantastic exaggeration of its
idea, which I mentioned earlier, would make us believe. Rather,
sociology adapts itself to each specific discipline — economics,
history of culture, ethics, theology^ or what not. In this respect,
it is essentially like induction. At its time, induction, as a new
principle of investigation, penetrated into all kinds of problem
areas. It thus contributed new solutions for tasks well established
in these areas. The parallel suggests that sociology is no more
a special science than induction is (and surely, it is not an all-
embracing science). Insofar as it is based on the notions that man
must be understood as a social animal and that society is the

14 The Field of Sociology

medium of all historical events, sociology contains no subject
matter that is not already treated in one of the extant sciences.
It only opens up a new avenue for all of them. It supplies them
with a scientific method which, precisely because of its applica-
bility to all problems, is not a science with its own content.^

In its very generality, this method is apt to form a common
basis for problem areas that previously, in the absence of their
mutual contact, lacked a certain clarity. The universality of
sociation, which makes for the reciprocal shaping of the indi-
viduals, has its correspondence in the singleness of the sociologi-
cal way of cognition. The sociological approach yields possi-
bilities of solution or of deeper study which may be derived from
fields of knowledge contentually quite different (perhaps) from
the field of the particular problem under investigation. I will
mention three examples, which range from the most specific to
the most general.

(1) The criminologist may learn much concerning the nature
of so-called mass crimes from a sociological investigation of the
psychology of the theatre audience. For here, the stimulus of a
collective-impulsive behavior can still be clearly ascertained.
Furthermore, this behavior occurs in the sphere of art which,
as it were, is abstract and precisely delimited. Thus here — and
this is very important for the problem of guilt in regard to “mass
crimes” — the extent to which the individual can be determined
by a mass in physical proximity with him, and the extent to
which subjective and objective value judgments can be elimi-
nated under the impact of contagion, may be observed under
conditions that are as purely experimental and crucial as scarcely
anywhere else.

( 2 ) The student of religion is often inclined to explain the
life of the religious community and its readiness to sacrifice in
terms of their devotion to an ideal that is common to all mem-
bers. He may tend to ascribe the conduct of life, inspired as it is
by the hope in a perfect state beyond the lives of the existing in-
dividuals, to the strength in content of the religious faith. Yet

2 These last and some later sentences are taken from my larger work, Soziologie:
Untersuchungen uber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908) [Sociology: Studies
in the Forms of Sociation], which treats some of the thoughts sketched here in
greater detail and, particularly, with more thorough historical documentation.

Sociology as a Method 15

the members of a Social-Democratic labor union may exhibit the
same traits in their common and mutual behavior. If the student
of religion notes this similarity, he may learn that religious be-
havior does not exclusively depend on religious contents, but
that it is a generally human form of behavior which is realized
under the stimulus not only of transcendental objects but also
of other motivations. He will also gain insight into something
even more important to him. This is the fact that, even in its
autonomy, religious life contains elements that are not specifically
religious, but social. Certainly, these elements — particular kinds
of reciprocal attitude and behavior — are fused organically with
the religious mood itself. But only when they are isolated by
means of the sociological method, will they show what within
the whole complex of religious behavior may legitimately be
considered purely religious, that is, independent of anything
social.

( 3 ) I will give one last example of the mutual fertilization
of problem areas that is suggested by the common involvement
of human sociation in all of them. The contemporary student
of political or cultural history is often inclined, for instance, to
derive the character of the domestic policy pursued by a given
country from its economic conditions and processes as sufficient
causes. Suppose he explains the strong individualism of early
Italian Renaissance political constitutions as the effect of the
liberation of economic life from guild and church ties. Here it is
an observation of the historian of art that may greatly qualify
his conception. The observation is that already in the beginning
of the epoch under discussion there was an immense spread of
naturalistic and individualistic portrait busts. Thus the general
attention appears to have shifted from what men have in com-
mon (and what therefore can easily be relegated into somewhat
more abstract and ideal spheres) to what must be left to the
individual. Attention is focused on the significance of personal
strength; the concrete is preferred to the general law that is
valid “on the whole.” And this discovery suggests that the ob-
served economic individualism is the manifestation of a funda-
mental sociological change which has found its expression in the
fields of art and politics as well. It suggests that none of these
immediately caused the other.

16 The Field of Sociology

Perhaps, in fact, sociological analyses of this sort are apt
quite generally to point the way toward a conception of history
which is more profound than historical materialism, and which
may even supersede it. Historical changes, at their properly effec-
tive level, are possibly changes in sociological forms. It is per-
haps the way in which individuals and groups behave toward
one another; in which the individual behaves toward his group;
in which value accents, accumulations, prerogatives, and similar
phenomena shift among the elements of society — perhaps it is
these things which make for truly epochal events. And if eco-
nomics seems to determine all the other areas of culture, the
truth behind this tempting appearance would seem to be that
it itself is determined — determined by sociological shifts which
similarly shape all other cultural phenomena. Thus, the form
of economics, too, is merely a ''superstructure§ ** on top of the
conditions and transformations in the purely sociological struc-
ture. And this sociological structure is the ultimate historical
element which is bound to determine all other contents of life,
even if in a certain parallelism with economics.

§ 4 . The Problem Areas of Sociology

[a] THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF HISTORICAL LIFE

("general sociology**)

These considerations afford a glimpse, beyond the mere con-
cept of sociological method, at the first basic problem area of
sociology. Although it covers almost all of human existence, it
does not therefore lose that character of one-sided abstraction that
no science can get rid of. For however socially determined and
permeated, as it were, each item in the economic and intellectual,
political and juridical, even religious and generally cultural
spheres may be, nevertheless, in the actuality of concrete life,
this social determination is interwoven with other determina-
tions that stem from other sources. Above all, from the circum-
stance that things also have a purely objective character. It is
always some objective content — technical, dogmatic, intellectual,
physiological — which channels the development of the social
forces and which, by virtue of its own character, logic, and law,
keeps it within certain directions and limits. Any social phe-

The Problem Areas of Sociology 17

nomenon, no matter in what material it realize itself, must sub-
mit to the natural laws of this material. Any intellectual achieve-
ment is tied, in however various ways, to the laws of thought and
to the behavior of objects. Any creation in the fields of art, poli-
tics, law, medicine, philosophy, or in any other field of inven-
tion, observes a certain order that we can understand in terms
of the objective situation of its contents and that is characterized
by such relations as intensification, connection, differentiation,
combination, etc. No human wish or practice can take arbitrary
steps, jump arbitrary distances, perform arbitrary syntheses. They
must follow the intrinsic logic of things.

Thus, one could very well construct the history of art, as a
perfectly understandable development, by presenting works of
art themselves, anonymously, in their temporal sequence and
stylistic evolution; or the development of law, as the sequence of
particular institutions and laws; or that of science, as the mere
series, historical or systematic, of its results; etc. Here, as in the
cases of a song that is analyzed in terms of its musical value, or of
a physical theory in terms of its truth, or of a machine in terms
of its efficiency, we realize that all contents of human life, even
though they materialize only under the conditions and in the
dynamics of social life, nevertheless permit interpretations ignor-
ing it. Objects embody their own ideas; they have significance,
laws, value standards which are independent of both the social
and the individual life and which make it possible to define and
understand them in their own terms. In comparison with full
reality, of course, even this understanding involves abstraction,
since no objective content is realized by its own logic alone but
only through the cooperation of historical and psychological
forces. Cognition cannot grasp reality in its total immediacy.
What we call objective content is something conceived under a
specific category.

Under one of these categories, the history of mankind ap-
pears as the behavior and product of individuals. One may look
at a work of art only in regard to its artistic significance; one may
place it, as if it had fallen from the sky, within a series of artistic
products. Yet one may also understand it in terms of the artist’s
personality and development, his experiences and tendencies.
One may interpret it as a pulsation or immediate experience of

18 The Field of Sociology

individual life. Thus viewed, the work of art remains within
the bounds of the individual and his continuity. Certain cultural
data — above all art and, in general, everything that has the
breath of creativity — appear more easily graspable in such a
perspective than do other data. Quite generally, to look at the
world as something that is carried by the active and receptive,
typical or unique subject, is one of the possibilities of translating
the unity of all human creation into understandability. The
manifestation of the individual strikes us as an active element
everywhere. Its laws permit us to form a plane, as it were, on
which to project reality in all its fullness.

The purpose of this discussion is to show that there exists not
only social life as a basis for the life of mankind and as a formula
of it. This life may also be derived from the objective significance
of its contents, and be interpreted in these terms. And it may
finally be conceived in the framework of the nature and creativity
of the individual. Perhaps there are other interpretive categories
that have not yet been clearly developed. At any rate, all these
analyses and structuralizations of our immediate life and crea-
tivity experience this life as a unity. They lie on the same plane
and have the same right to be heard. Therefore — and this is the
point — no one of them can claim to be the only or the only
adequate manner of cognition. Naturally, neither can such a
claim be made by the approach which proceeds in terms of the
social form of our existence. It, too, is limited; and it supplements
other approaches by which in turn it is supplemented. With this
qualification, however, it can, in principle, offer a possibility of
cognition in front of the totality of human existence.

The facts of politics, religion, economics, law, culture styles,
language, and innumerable others can be analyzed by asking
how they may be understood, not as individual achievements or
in their objective significance, but as products and developments
of society. Nor would the absence of an exhaustive and undis-
puted definition of the nature of society render the cognitive
value of this approach illusory. For it is a characteristic of the
human mind to be capable of erecting solid structures, while
their foundations are still insecure. Physical and chemical propo-
sitions do not suffer from the obscure and problematical charac-
ter of the concept of matter; juridical propositions, not from the

The Problem Areas of Sociology 19

quarrel over the nature of law and of its first principles; psycho-
logical ones, not from the highly questionable “nature of the
soul/’ If, therefore, we apply the “sociological method” to the
investigation of the fall of the Roman Empire or of the relation
between religion and economics in the great civilizations or of
the origin of the idea of the German national state or of the
predominance of the Baroque style; if, that is, we view these
and similar phenomena as the result of indistinguishable contri-
butions made by the interaction of individuals, or as life stages
in the lives of superindividual groups; then we are, in point of
fact, conducting our investigations according to the sociological
method. And these investigations may be designated as sociology.

Yet from these sociological investigations there emerges a
further abstraction that may well be characterized as the result
of a highly differentiated scientific culture. This abstraction
yields a group of sociological problems in the narrower sense of
this term. If we study all kinds of life data in terms of their
development within and by means of social groups, we must as-
sume that they have common elements in their materialization
(even though different elements, under different circumstances).
These common elements emerge if, and only if, social life itself
emerges as tjje origin or the subject of these data. The question
thus arises whether perhaps it is possible to find, in the most
heterogeneous historical developments that share nothing but
the fact that they are exhibited by one particular group, a com-
mon law, or a rhythm, that is fully derivable from this one fact.

It has been maintained, for instance, that all historical de-
velopments pass through three phases. The first is the undifferen-
tiated unity of manifold elements. The second is the differen-
tiated articulation of these elements, that have become alienated
from one another. The third is a new unity, the harmonious
interpenetration of the elements that have been preserved, how-
ever, in their specific characters. More briefly, the road of all
completed developments leads from an undifferentiated unity
through a differentiated manifoldness to a differentiated unity.
Another conception of historical life sees it as a process which
progresses from organic commonness to mechanical simultan-
eousness. Property, work, and interests originally grow out of
the solidarity of the individuals, the carriers of the group life; but

20 The Field of Sociology

later are distributed among egoists each of whom seeks only his
own benefit and, only because of this motive, enters into relations
with others. The first stage is the manifestation of an unconscious
will which inheres in the very depth of our nature and becomes
evident only as a feeling; the second stage, by contrast, is the
product of an arbitrary will and of the calculating intellect. Ac-
cording to a still different conception, it is possible to ascertain
a definite relation, in any given epoch, between its intellectual
world view and its social conditions: both equally are manifesta-
tions, in some sense, of biological development. Finally, there
is the notion that human cognition, on the whole, must go
through three stages. In the first, or theological stage, natural
phenomena are explained by recourse to the arbitrary will of all
kinds of entities. In the second, metaphysical stage, the super-
natural causes are replaced by laws which, however, are mystical
and speculative (as, for instance, 'Vital force,” "ends of nature,”
etc.). Finally, the third, or positive stage corresponds to modern
experimental and exact science. Each particular branch of knowl-
edge develops by passing through these three stages; and the
knowledge of this fact removes the enigmatic character of social
development, which pervades areas of all kinds.

A further sociological question under this category is the
problem concerning conditions of group power ^ as distinguished
from individual power. The conditions for the power of indi-
viduals are immediately evident: intelligence, energy, an apt
alternation between consistency and elasticity, etc.; but to ac-
count for the historical power of such extraordinary phenomena
as Jesus, on the one hand, and Napoleon, on the other, there must
also exist as yet unexplained forces which are by no means clari-
fied by labels like "power of suggestion,” "prestige,” and so forth.
But in the exercise of power by groups, both over their members
and over other groups, there operate still other factors. Some of
these are the faculty of rigid concentration, as well as of diversion
into independent activities by individual group members; con-
scious faith in leading minds; groping toward expansion; egoism
of the individual paralleled by sacrificial devotion to the whole;
fanatic dogmatism, as well as thoroughly critical intellectual
freedom. All these are effective in the rise (and, negatively, in
the decay) not only of political nations but also of countless eco-

The Problem Areas of Sociology 21

nomic and religious, party-like and family groups. In all investi-
gations of group power, the question, clearly, is not the origin of
sociation as such, but the fate of society as something already
constituted. And this fate is ascertained inductively.

Another question that arises out of the sociological considera-
tion of conditions and events is that of the value relations be-
tween collective and individual conduct, action, and thought.
Which differences of level, as measured by certain ideal standards,
exist between social and individual phenomena? The inner,
fundamental structure of society itself here becomes as little
the central problem as it did in connection with the preceding
question. Again, this structure is already presupposed, and the
data are considered on the basis of this presupposition. The ques-
tion, rather, is: which general principles are revealed in these
data if they are considered in this particular perspective? In
the next chapter, this problem of levels will be examined as an
example of a sociological type that may be called ‘‘general
sociology.”

[b] THE STUDY OF SOCIETAL FORMS (‘‘PURE, OR
FORMAL, sociology”)

Scientific: abstraction cuts through the full concreteness of
social phenomena from yet a different angle. It thereby connects
all that is “sociological” — “sociological” in a sense that will be
discussed presently and that appears to me to be the most decisive
sense of the term. In doing this, scientific abstraction produces a
consistent manner of cognition. Yet it fully realizes that in
actuality, sociological phenomena do not exist in such isolation
and recomposition, but that they are factored out of this living
reality by means of an added concept. It will be remembered that
societal facts are not only societal. It is always an objective content
(sense-perceived or intellectual, technical or physiological) which
is socially embodied, produced, or transmitted, and which only
thus produces the totality of social life. Yet this societal forma-
tion of contents itself can be investigated by a science. Geometri-
cal abstraction investigates only the spatial forms of bodies, al-
though empirically, these forms are given merely as the forms of
some material content. Similarly, if society is conceived as inter-
action among individuals, the description of the forms of this

22 The Field of Sociology

interaction is the task of the science of society in its strictest and
most essential sense.

The first problem area of sociology, it will be remembered,
consisted of the whole of historical life insofar as it is formed
societally. Its societal character was conceived as an undifferen-
tiated whole. The second problem area now under consideration,
consists of the societal forms themselves. These are conceived as
constituting society (and societies) out of the mere sum of living
men. The study of this second area may be called '‘pure soci-
ology,'* which abstracts the mere element of sociation. It isolates
it inductively and psychologically from the heterogeneity of its
contents and purposes, which, in themselves, are not societal. It
thus proceeds like grammar, which isolates the pure forms of
language from their contents through which these forms, never-
theless, come to life. In a comparable manner, social groups which
are the most diverse imaginable in purpose and general signifi-
cance, may nevertheless show identical forms of behavior toward
one another on the part of their individual members. We find
superiority and subordination, competition, division of labor,
formation of parties, representation, inner solidarity coupled
with exclusiveness toward the outside, and innumerable similar
features in the state, in a religious community, ii) a band of con-
spirators, in an economic association, in an art school, in the
family. However diverse the interests are that give rise to these
sociations, the forms in which the interests are realized may yet
be identical. And on the other hand, a contentually identical
interest may take on form in very different sociations. Economic
interest is realized both in competition and in the planned or-
ganization of producers, in isolation against other groups as well
as in fusion with them. The religious contents of life, although
they remain identical, sometimes demand an unregulated, some-
times a centralized form of community. The interests upon
which the relations between the sexes are based are satisfied by
an almost innumerable variety of family forms; etc.

Hence, not only may the form in which the most divergent
contents are realized be identical; but, inversely, the content, too,
may persist, while its medium — the interactions of the indivi-
duals — adopts a variety of forms. We see, then, that the analysis
in terms of form and content transforms the facts — which, in their

The Problem Areas of Sociology 23

immediacy, present these two categories as the indissoluble unity
of social life — in such a way as to justify the sociological problem.
This problem demands the identification, the systematic order-
ing, the psychological explanation, and the historical develop-
ment of the pure forms of sociation. Obviously, in terms of its
subject matter, sociology thus seen is not a special science, as it
was in terms of the first problem area. Yet in terms of its clearly
specified way of asking questions, it is a special science even here.
The discussion of “sociability,’' in the third chapter of the pres-
ent sketch, will offer an example that may serve to symbolize the
total picture of the investigations in “pure sociology.” ®

[c] THE STUDY OF THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL
ASPECTS OF SOCIETY (“PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIOLOGY”)

The modern scientific attitude toward facts finally suggests a
third complex of questions concerning the fact “society.” Insofar
as these questions are adjacent (as it were) to the upper and
lower limits of this fact, they are sociological only in a broad sense
of the term; more properly, they are philosophical. Their content
is constituted by this fact itself. Similarly, nature and art, out
of which we develop their immediate sciences, also supply us
with the subject matters of their philosophies, whose interests
and methods lie on a different level. It is the level on which fac-
tual details are investigated concerning their significance for the
totality of mind, life, and being in general, and concerning their
justification in terms of such a totality.

Thus, like every other exact science which aims at the im-
mediate understanding of the given, social science, too, is sur-
rounded by two philosophical areas. One of these covers the
conditions, fundamental concepts, and presuppositions of con-
crete research, which cannot be taken care of by research itself
since it is based on them. In the other area, this research is car-
ried toward completions, connections, questions, and concepts
that have no place in experience and in immediately objective
knowledge. The first area is the epistemology, the second, the
metaphysics of the particular discipline.

SI may be allowed to call attention to the fact that my above-mentioned
Soziologie tries to present the “forms of sociation” in a completeness which is by
no means definitive but is the best I can attain at this time.

24 The Field of Sociology

The tasks of the special social sciences — the study of eco-
nomics and of institutions, the history of morals and of parties,
population theory, and the discussion of occupational differen-
tiation — could not be carried out at all if they did not presuppose
certain concepts, postulates, and methods as axiomatic. If we did
not assume a certain drive toward egoistic gain and pleasure,
but at the same time the limitability of this drive through coer-
cion, custom, and morals; if we did not claim the right to speak
of the moods of a mass as a unit, although many of the members
of this mass are only its superficial followers or even dissenters;
if we did not declare the development within a particular sphere
of culture understandable by recreating it as an evolution with
a psychological logic — if we did not proceed in this way, we
should be utterly unable to cast innumerable facts into a social
picture. In all these and in countless other situations, we operate
with methods of thinking that use particular events as raw ma-
terials from which we derive social-scientific knowledge. So-
ciology proceeds like physics, which could never have been
developed without grasping external phenomena on the basis
of certain assumptions concerning space, matter, movement, and
enumerability. Every special social science customarily and quite
legitimately accepts without question such a basis of itself. Within
its own domain, it could not even come to grips with it; for, in
order to do so, obviously it would also have to take all other
social sciences into consideration. Sociology thus emerges as the
epistemology of the special social sciences, as the analysis and
systematization of the bases of their forms and norms.

If these problems go beneath the concrete knowledge of
social life, others, as it were, go beyond it. They try, by means of
hypothesis and speculation, to supplement the unavoidably frag-
mentary character of the empirical facts (which always are frag-
mentary) in the direction of a closed system. They order the
chaotic and accidental events into series that follow an idea or
approach a goal. They ask where the neutral and natural se-
quences of events might provide these events or their totality
with significance. They assert or doubt — and both assertion and
doubt, equally, derive from a super-empirical world view — that
the play of social-historical phenomena contains a religious sig-
nificance, or a relation (to be known or at least sensed) to the

The Problem Areas of Sociology 25

metaphysical ground of being. More particularly, they ask ques-
tions such as these: Is society the purpose of human existence, or
is it a means for the individual? Does the ultimate value of social
development lie in the unfolding of personality or of association?
Do meaning and purpose inhere in social phenomena at all, or
exclusively in individuals? Do the typical stages of the develop-
ment of societies show an analogy with cosmic evolutions
so that there might be a general formula or rhythm of develop-
ment in general (as, for instance, the fluctuation between differen-
tiation and integration), which applies to social and material data
alike? Are social movements guided by the principle of the con-
servation of energy? Are they directed by material or by ideologi-
cal motives?

Evidently, this type of question cannot be answered by the
ascertainment of facts. Rather, it must be answered by interpreta-
tions of ascertained facts and by efforts to bring the relative and
problematical elements of social reality under an over-all view.
Such a view does not compete with empirical claims because it
serves needs which are quite different from those answered by
empirical propositions.

The investigation of such problems, clearly, is more strictly
based on differences in world views, individual and party valua-
tions, and ultimate, undemonstrable convictions than is the
investigation within the other two, more strictly fact-determined
branches of sociology. For this reason, the discussion of a single
problem as an example could not be as objective and could not
as validly suggest the whole type of similar problems here, as is
possible in the case of the other two branches. It therefore seems
to me more advisable to trace, in the last chapter, a line of perti-
nent theories as they have been developed, in the course of many
controversies, during a particular period of general intellectual
history.

Chapter 2

The Social and the
Individual Level

An Example of General Sociology

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN

the only topic of social investigation was the historical fate or the
practical politics of particular groups. During the last decades,
however, sociation^ or the life of groups as units, has become such
a topic. Attention thus was attracted by what is common to all
groups inasmuch as they are societies. This presently led to the
examination of a closely related problem — of the characteristics
which distinguish social from individual life. At first glance, the
differences seem obvious. For instance, there is the basic im-
mortality of the group, as against the mortality of the individual.
There is the possibility of the group eliminating even its most
important elements without collapsing — an elimination which,
applied to the individual, would annihilate him. But the prob-
lem was of a more subtle, perhaps psychological, nature. No mat-
ter whether one considers the group that exists irrespective of its
individual members a fiction or a reality, in order to understand
certain facts one must treat it as if it actually did have its own
life, and laws, and other characteristics. And if one is to justify
the sociological standpoint, it is precisely the differences between
these characteristics and those of the individual existence that
one must clarify.

§ 1 . The Determinateness of the Group and the
Vacillation of the Individual

A clue for the ascertainment of these differences lies in the
suggestion that societal actions have incomparably greater pur-

The Determinateness of the Group 27

posiveness and to-the-pointness than individual actions. The
individual, the argument goes, is torn by conflicting feelings, im-
pulses, and considerations. In his conduct, he is not always cer-
tain subjectively, much less correct objectively, in his knowledge
of alternatives. Although it often changes its line of action, the
social group is, by contrast, nevertheless determined at any one
moment to follow, without reservation, the line of that moment.
Above all, it always knows whom to consider its enemy and
whom its friend. Furthermore, it shows less discrepancy than
the individual between will and deed, and between means and
ends. Individual actions, therefore, strike us as “free,*' and mass
actions impress us as if they were determined by natural laws.

This whole formulation is highly questionable. Nevertheless,
it merely exaggerates a real and highly significant difference be-
tween group and individual. The difference results from the fact
that the aims of the public spirit, as of any collective, are those
that usually strike the individual as if they were his own funda-
mentally simple and primitive aims. There are two reasons why
this fact is so often not realized. One is the power that public
aims have gained with the expansion of their range. The other
is the highly complex techniques with which especially modern
public life appeals to the individual intelligence when trying to
put these aims into practice. The social group does not vacillate
or err in all its aims, just as the individual does not in only his
most primitive ones. The insurance of his existence, the acquisi-
tion of new property, the pleasure derived from the maintenance
and expansion of his power, and the protection of his possessions
are fundamental drives of the individual. In pursuing their
satisfaction, he associates with an indefinite number of other in-
dividuals. It is because he does not choose these aspirations nor
vacillate in their pursuit that the social aspiration, which unites
him with others, knows no choice or vacillation either. Further-
more, just as the individual proceeds with clarity, determination,
and certainty of aim in his purely egoistic actions, so the mass
in regard to all of its aims. The mass does not know the dualism
of egoistic and altruistic impulses, a dualism that often renders
the individual helpless and makes him embrace a vacuum. Law,
the first and essential condition of the life of groups, large and
small, has aptly been called the “ethical minimum.*' As a matter

28 The Social and the Individual Level

of fact, the norms adequate to secure the continuation of the
group (even if only precariously), constitute a bare minimum
for the external existence of the individual as a social being. If he
observed only them, without tying himself to a large number of
additional laws, he would be an ethical abnormality, an utterly
impossible being.

§ 2 . Individual vs. Group Member

This consideration hints at the nature of the difference in
level between the mass and the individual. The difference be-
comes clearly visible, and can be understood, on the basis of only
one fact. This fact is the possibility of separating, in the indi-
vidual himself, the qualities and behaviors by which he '‘forms’'
the “mass” and which he contributes to the collective spirit, on
the one hand; and, on the other, different qualities which con-
stitute his private property, as it were, and which lift him out
of everything he may have in common with others. The first part
of his nature can evidently consist only in more primitive ele-
ments, that are inferior in terms of finesse and intellectuality.
This is so, above all, because it is the existence of these elements
alone that we can be relatively sure of in all individuals. If the
organic world gradually develops from lower to higher forms,
the lower and more primitive ones, obviously, are the oldest.
But thus, they are also the most widely diffused: the heredity of
the species is the more certainly transmitted to the individual,
the longer it has been in existence and has become fixed. By
contrast, more recently acquired organs — such as the higher and
more complex organs are to a much greater extent — always are
more variable; and it is impossible to be sure whether all mem-
bers of a given species already possess them. Thus the length of
time during which a given trait has been inherited constitutes
the real relation that exists between its primitive character and
its diffusion. But we must consider not only biological heredity.
There also are intellectual traits that manifest themselves in
word and knowledge, in orientation of feeling, and in norms of
will and judgment. As traditions, both conscious and uncon-
scious, they permeate the individual; and the more so, the more
generally, firmly, and unquestionably they have become parts of

Esteem of the Old and of the New 29

the intellectual life of his society — that is, the older they are. To
this same extent, however, they are also less complex; they are
coarser and closer to the immediate manifestations and necessi-
ties of life. As they become more refined and differentiated, they
lose the probability of being the property of all. Rather, they
become more or less individual, and are only accidentally shared
with others.

§ 3. Esteem of the Old and of the New

This fundamental relationship is apt to explain a character-
istic phenomenon of culture: the fact, namely, that both the old,
and at the same time the new and rare, enjoy particular esteem.
The esteem of the old needs little comment. Perhaps what has
existed always and has been transmitted since time immemorial,
owes the respect in which it is held not only to the patina of age,
with its mystical-romantic fascination. It is also esteemed, pre-
cisely, because of the fact I stress here, namely, that it is also most
widely diffused and most deeply rooted in the individual. It
resides at or near the layer which is the soil of the individual's
instinctive, undemonstrable, and* irrefutable valuations. In early
medieval litigations, for instance, the decision was generally made
on the basis of the older of two contradictory royal charters.
This was probably due, not so much to the conviction of the
greater justice of the older document, as to the feeling that be-
cause of its greater age it had diffused justice more widely and had
defined it more firmly than the more recent charter could have
done. In other words, the older document enjoyed greater pres-
tige because its longer existence was the real cause for its accord
with the majority sentiment of justice. We will probably have to
assume quite generally (in spite of all exceptions which certainly
must be admitted) that the older is also the simpler, less special-
ized, and less articulated. We must also assume, then, that it is
accessible to the mass at large not only for this reason but also
because it is the older, that is, that which is more securely trans-
mitted to the individual, externally and internally, and there-
fore is something apt to be justified and cherished as a matter
of course.

Yet the same assumption also accounts for the opposite valua-

30 The Social and the Individual Level

tion. Lessing’s dictum, “The first thoughts are everybody’s
thoughts,’’ suggests that the thoughts which emerge in us instinc-
tively, namely, from the most secure (because oldest) layers of
our minds, are the most generally diffused. And this explains
Lessing’s derogatory tone when he speaks of them. For him,
obviously, more valuable thoughts — those that exhibit an in-
dissoluble interaction of individuality with newness — begin only
beyond the primitive ones. Another example: in India we find
that the social hierarchy of occupations depends on their age.
The more recent occupations are esteemed more highly — pre-
sumably because they are more complex, refined, and difficult,
and are therefore accessible only to the individual talent. To
recapitulate: the reason for the esteem of the new and rare lies
in the discriminatory power of our psychological make-up. What-
ever attracts our consciousness, excites our interest, or increases
our alertness, must somehow distinguish itself from what in and
outside ourselves is matter-of-fact, everyday, and habitual.

§ 4 . The Sociological Significance of Individual
Similarity and Dissimilarity

It is above all the practical significance of men for one an-
other that is determined by both similarities and differences
among them. Similarity, as fact or as tendency, is no less import-
ant than difference. In the most varied forms, both are the great
principles of all external and internal development. In fact, the
cultural history of mankind can be conceived as the history of
the struggles and conciliatory attempts between the two. For the
actions of the individual, his difference from others is of far
greater interest than is his similarity with them. It largely is
differentiation from others that challenges and determines our
activity. We depend on the observation of their differences if we
want to use them and adopt the right attitude toward them. Our
practical interest concentrates on what gives us advantages and
disadvantages in our dealings with them, not on that in which
we coincide. Similarity, rather, provides the indispensable condi-
tion for any developing action whatever. Darwin reports that
in his many contacts with animal breeders he never met one who
believed in the common origin of species. The interest in the

The IndividuaVs Superiority over the Mass 31

slight variation that characterized the particular stock which he
happened to breed and which constituted a practical value for
him, so occupied his consciousness that it left no room for noting
the basic similarity of this stock with other races and species. It
is understandable that such an interest in the diflEerentiae of his
property should extend to all other possessions and relations of
the individual. In general, we may say that if something is objec-
tively of equal importance in terms of both similarity with a type
and differentiation from it, we will be more conscious of the
differentiation. In regard to the similarity, organic purposiveness
perhaps proceeds without consciousness, because in practical
life it needs all the consciousness there is for the awareness of
differences. The interest in differentiation in fact is so great that
in practice it produces differences where there is no objective
basis for them. We note, for instance, that organizations, whether
they be legislative bodies or committees in charge of “social f unc-
tions, “ in spite of their outspoken and unifying positions and
aims, are apt, in the course of time, to split up into factions; and
these factions stand in relations to one another that are similar
to those between the original organization as a whole and another
organization with a totally different character. It is as if each
individual .largely felt his own significance only by contrasting
himself with others. As a matter of fact, where such a contrast
does not exist, he may even artificially create it. He may do so
even when the whole solidarity and unity he now scans in his
search for a contrast, derive from the existence of a united front
that he and others have formed in opposition to another similar
united front.

§ 5 . The IndividuaVs Superiority over the Mass

Countless additional examples from cultural and social his-
tory testify to the fact that the new, the rare, and the individual
(merely three aspects, evidently, of the same fundamental phe-
nomenon) are rated as the valuationally preferred. This discus-
sion, however, only has the purpose of throwing light on the
inverse phenomenon, the fact, that is, that the qualities and be-
haviors with which the individual forms a mass, because he shares
them with others, are rated valuationally inferior. Here we deal

32 The Social and the Individual Level

with what might be called the sociological tragedy as such. The
more refined, highly developed, articulated the qualities of an
individual are, the more unlikely are they to make him similar
to other individuals and to form a unit with corresponding
qualities in others. Rather, they tend to become incomparable;
and the elements, in terms of which the individual can count
on adapting himself to others and on forming a homogeneous
mass with them, are increasingly reduced to lower and primi-
tively more sensuous levels. This explains how it is possible for
the “folk’’ or the “mass’* to be spoken of with contempt, with-
out there being any need for the individual to feel himself re-
ferred to by this usage, which actually does not refer to any
individual. As soon as the individual is considered in his entirety,
he appears to possess much higher qualities than those he con-
tributes to the collective unit. This situation has found its classi-
cal formulation in Schiller: “Seen singly, everybody is passably
intelligent and reasonable; but united into a body, they are block-
heads.’’ The fact that individuals, in all their divergencies, leave
only the lowest parts of their personalities to form a common
denominator, is stressed by Heine: “You have rarely understood
me, and rarely did I understand you. Only when we met in the
mire did we understand each other at once.’’

Thisldifference between the individual and the mass level is
so profoundly characteristic of social existence and is of such
important consequences that it is worthwhile quoting additional
observations. /They come from authorities of extremely different
historical positions who are similar, however, in the sense that
these positions gave them exceptional insight into collective
phenomena. Solon is supposed to have said that each of his
Athenians is a shrewd fox; but that, if assembled on the Pnyx,
they amount to a herd of sheep. The Cardinal Retz, when describ-
ing the procedure of the Parisian parliament at the time of the
Fronde, notes in his memoirs that numerous bodies, even if their
members include many high-stationed and cultivated indivi-
duals, in common discussion and procedure always act as a mob,
reverting to the conceptions and passions of the common people.
Frederick the Great, in a remark that is very similar to that of
Solon, says that his generals are the most reasonable people as
long as he talks to them as individuals, but that they are “sheep-

The Individual’s Superiority over the Mass 35

heads” when assembled in war council. Evidently something
comparable is suggested by the English historian Freeman, who
observes that the House of Cotnmons, though an aristocratic
body in terms of the ranks of its members, nevertheless, when
assembled, behaves like a democratic rabble. The best authority
on British trade unions notes that their mass assemblies often
result in very stupid and pernicious resolutions, so that most of
such meetings have been given up in favor of assemblies of dele-
gates. This is confirmed by observations that are insignificant
in their contents but are sociologically relevant, not only because
of their frequency, but also because they symbolize historically
very important situations and events. I shall give only a few
examples. Eating and drinking, the oldest and intellectually
most negligible functions, can form a tie, often the only one,
among very heterogeneous persons and groups. Stag parties may
be attended by highly cultivated individuals who, nevertheless,
have the tendency to pass the time by telling off-color jokes.
Among younger people, the peak of gaiety and harmony is al-
ways attained by means of the most primitive and intellectually
least pretentious social games.

'The difference between the individual and collective levels
accounts for the fact that the necessity to oblige the masses, or
even habitually to expose oneself to them, easily corrupts the
character. It pulls the individual away from his individuality
and down to a level with all and sundry. T o consider it a question-
able virtue of the journalist, the actor, and the demagogue to
“seek the favor of the masses” would not be altogether justified
if these masses consisted of the sum of the total personal existences
of their members. For there is no reason whatever to despise them.
But actually, the mass is no such sum. It is a new phenomenon
made up, not of the total individualities of its members, but only
of those fragments of each of them in which he coincides with
all others. These fragments, therefore, can be nothing but the
lowest and most primitive. It is this mass, and the level that must
always remain accessible to each of its members, that these intel-
lectually and morally endangered persons serve — and not each
of its members in its entirety.

34 The Social and the Individual Level
§ 6 . The Simplicity and Radicalism of the Mass

Evidently, this level does not permit ways of behavior which
presuppose a plurality of alternatives. All mass actions avoid
detours. Successfully or not, they attack their aims by the shortest
route. They always are dominated by one idea, and by as simple
an idea as possible. It is hardly possible for every member of the
mass to have the consciousness and conviction of a more varied
complex of ideas which, in addition, is identical with that of
everybody else. In view of the complex conditions under which
we live, any idea that seeks to gain adherents must be radical, and
must disregard a great many claims with which it is, or could be,
confronted. It thus is understandable that in general, in periods
of mass activation, radical parties should be powerful, and mediat-
ing parties that insist on the right of both sides, should be weak.
It is exceedingly characteristic of the difference between the
Greek and the Roman temper that the Greek citizens voted as a
unified mass under the immediate impact of the orator, while
the Romans voted in pre-established groups {centuriatim, trU
butim, etc.) that in a certain sense functioned as individuals. We
thus understand the relative calm and reasonableness characteris-
tic of Roman decisions, and the intransigence and passion that
so frequently marked the Greeks. Yet this psychological harmony
of the mass also produces certain negative virtues, whose opposite
presupposes a plurality of simultaneously conscious alternatives.
Thus, the mass neither lies nor simulates. Usually, however, and
because of the same psychological constitution, it also lacks con-
sciousness of responsibility.

^1. The Emotionality of the Mass Appeal and of the Mass

If one arranges psychological manifestations in a genetic and
systematic hierarchy, one will certainly place, at its basis, feeling
(though naturally not all feelings), rather than the intellect.
Pleasure and pain, as well as certain instinctive feelings that
serve the preservation of individual and species, have developed
prior to all operation with concepts, judgments, and conclusions.
Thus, the development of the intellect, more than anything else,
reveals the lag of the social behind the individual level, whereas

The Emotionality of the Mass Appeal 35

the realm of feeling may show the opposite. Carl Maria von
Weber’s statement about the public at large — “The individual is
an ass, and yet the whole is the voice of God” — does not conflict
with the appraisals of collective behavior that have been quoted
earlier. For it expresses the experience of the musician, who ap-
peals to the feeling, not to the intellect.

Whoever wants to affect the masses always succeeds by an
appeal to their feelings, very rarely by theoretical discussion,
however concise it may be. This is particularly true of masses
that are together in physical proximity. They exhibit something
one might call collective nervousness — a sensitivity, a passion,
an eccentricity that will hardly ever be found in anyone of their
members in isolation. The phenomenon has been observed even
in animal herds: the softest wing beat, the slightest jump of a
single animal often degenerate into a panic of the whole herd.
Human crowds, too, are characterized by casual stimuli making
for enormous effects, by the avalanche-like growth of the most
negligible impulses of love and hate, by an objectively quite
understandable excitation in the throes of which the mass blindly
storms from thought to deed — by an Excitation that carries the
individual without meeting any resistance.

These phenomena must probably be traced to mutual in-
fluences through effusions of feeling that are hard to ascertain.
Yet because they occur between each and all others, they come
to cause, in every member of the mass, an excitation that cannot
possibly be explained either in terms of him or of the matter at
issue. It is one of the most revealing, purely sociological phe-
nomena that the individual feels himself carried by the “mood”
of the mass, as if by an external force that is quite indifferent
to his own subjective being and wishing, and yet that the, mass is
exclusively composed of just such individuals. Their interaction
pure and simple shows a dynamic, which because of its power
appears as something objective. It conceals their own contribu-
tions from the interacting individuals. Actually the individual,
by being carried away, carries away.

Such an extreme intensification of feeling due to mere physi-
cal proximity is shown, for instance, by the Quakers. Although
the inwardness and subjectivism of their religion really op-
pose any sharing of worship, such a sharing nevertheless often

36 The Social and the Individual Level

emerges in their silent gatherings. The unintended feeling is
justified by the suggestion that it serves to bring them closer
to the spirit of God. Yet for them, such closeness can only come
from inspiration and nervous exaltation. These feelings must
therefore be evoked by mere physical proximity, even if it is
silent. After describing certain ecstatic traits of a member of the
assembly, a late seventeenth-century English Quaker suggests
that, by virtue of the members’ unification into one body, the
ecstasy of an individual often spreads to all others. It thereby
moves them deeply and fruitfully, and this irresistible experi-
ence, he writes, gains the association many members. Innumer-
able other cases teach us that a similar intensification of emo-
tionality overpowers individual intellectuality. It is as if
numbers in physical proximity multiplied the individual’s feel-
ing power. In the theatre or at other gatherings all of us laugh at
jokes that, in a smaller company, would merely make us shrug
our shoulders. What embarrassingly harmless quips scatter parlia-
mentary records with the annotation ‘'Laughter!” But not only
critical but also moral inhibitions are easily suspended in this
sociological state of inebriation. This suspension alone explains
so-called mass crimes, of which, afterward, the individual par-
ticipant declares himself innocent. He does so with good sub-
jective conscience, and not even without some objective justifica-
tion: the overpowering predominance of feeling destroyed the
psychological forces that customarily sustain the consistency and
stability of the person, and hence, his responsibility. Mass excite-
ment, however, also has its ethically valuable aspect: it may
produce a noble enthusiasm and an unlimited readiness to sacri-
fice. Yet this does not eliminate its distorted character and its
irresponsibility. It only stresses our removal from the value
standards that individual consciousness has developed, whether
practically effective or not.

§ 8 . The Level of Society as the Approximation to the
Loivest Common Level of its Members

On the basis of all we have said so far, we can bring the
formation of the social level under the following valuational

The Level of Society 37

formula: what is common to all can be the property of only those
who possess least. This is symbolized even by the notion of
‘‘property*' in its material sense. Thus, an English law of 1407
gave the initiative for monetary allotments to the House of
Commons; and the constitutional historian of the period ex-
plicitly states that the fundamental motive for this act was the
idea that it behooves the poorest of the three estates to determine
the maximum limit of the financial burden to be carried by the
general public. What all give equally can only be based on the
quota of the poorest. Here, too, is the purely sociological among
the various reasons for the phenomenon that the usurper, who
wants to dominate a society that is stratified by estates, usually
tries to gain support from the lowest classes. For, in order equally
to rise above all, he must level all; and this he can achieve, not
by raising the lower strata, but only by lowering the higher to
the level of the lower.

It is thus quite misleading to designate the level of a society
that considers itself a unit and practically operates as a unit, as
an “average” level. The “average” would result from adding up
the levels of the individuals and dividing the sum by their
number. This procedure would involve a raising of the lowest
individuals,. which actually is impossible. In reality, the level of
a society is very close to that of its lowest components, since it
must be possible for all to participate in it with identical valua-
tion and effectiveness. The character of collective behavior does
not lie near the “middle** but near the lower limits of its par-
ticipants. And if I am not mistaken, this accounts for the fact
that the term “mediocrity” refers, not at all to the actual value
average of a collection of individuals or achievements, but to a
quality considerably below it.

Here we have room, of course, to cover only short tracts of
the road of sociology, rather than all of it. Our treatment, in
other words, does not aim at a definitive statement concerning
the content of our science, but only at a sketch of the form and
method of dealing with this content. I shall therefore limit myself
to pointing out two of the many qualifications that must be
mentioned in connection with the general conception of the for-
mation of the social level that I have presented. In the first place,
this level, as indicated, is practically almost never fixed by the

38 The Social and the Individual Level

very lowest among the group members. Rather, it only tends
toward it, but usually stops somewhat above it, since the higher
elements of the collective usually resist this descent, in however
varying measures. Their countermovement results in the arrest of
the collective action before it arrives at the lowest possible value.

More significant is another limitation of the scheme that
must be recognized even if the principle of the scheme is correctly
understood. We said that what all have and are can be the ex-
clusive property only of the poorest. Therefore, the creation of
the mass, that is, the leveling of heterogeneous persons, can be
brought .about only by the lowering of the higher elements,
which is always possible, rather than by the raising of the lower
elements, which is rarely if ever possible. This psychological
mechanism, however, must be questioned. For the lowering of
the higher elements actually is not always possible. Our whole
discussion was based on the conception (which naturally was
very crude and even problematical) of a psychological structure
consisting of several layers. At its bottom we placed the primitive,
unintellectual elements, which biologically are more certain than
any others and which therefore can be presupposed to exist every-
where. On top of them we placed the rarer, more recent, and more
refined elements that eventually are differentiated to the point
of complete individuality. This allowed us to conceive of the
possibility that even in the case of the highest development of
the latter they could consciously or unconsciously be eliminated,
and the behavior of the individual could exclusively be de-
termined by the former. Thus, a homogeneous group spirit could
result from contributions which had become identical.

Yet this whole process may occur sometimes, or even often,
but it does not occur always. For in some individuals, the lower
elements are so interfused with the higher ones that the tempting
physical analogy, according to which man can always easily de-
scend but can ascend only with difficulty and sometimes not at
all, becomes quite inapplicable. This is at once evident in the
field of ethics. Here, such traits as the desire for pleasure, cruelty,
acquisitiveness, and mendacity are lowest in the psychological
hierarchy. To a decent man, even if he should not be free of
residues or suppressed fragments of such traits, it is simply im-
possible to be motivated by them in his actions or even to lower

The Level of Society 39

his level casually, and thereby to suspend his higher qualities.
Such impossibility, however, is found far beyond the field of
ethics. However true it may be that the valet does not understand
the hero because he cannot rise to his height, it is equally true
that the hero does not understand the valet because he cannot
lower himself to his subordinate level.

In general, it is very revealing to distinguish men according
to their capacity or incapacity to suppress their most valuable
powers and interests in favor of their lower qualities which cer-
tainly exist in them in varying degrees. The incapacity to do so,
at any rate, is one of the main reasons why at all times certain
noble and intellectual personalities have kept aloof from public
life. In spite of the possibility of their roles as leaders, they must
have felt what a great statesman once formulated in regard to his
party when he said: '‘I am their leader, therefore I must follow
them.” In spite of Bismarck's dictum that “politics corrupts
character,” however, this aloofness does not by itself imply that
these abstinent individuals are generally more valuable than are
more public-minded persons. It rather reveals a certain weakness
and lack of confidence in his higher elements, if the individual
does not dare descend far enough toward the social level to be
prepared for the fight against the social level — which is always
a fight for it. And evidently, the fact that men of the highest
individual caliber so often avoid contact with the social level
delays its general rise.

Chapter 3

Sociability

An Example of Pure, or Formal, Sociology

IN THE INTRODUCTORY

chapter, I mentioned the motive which is responsible for the
constitution of “pure sociology'* as a specific problem area. This
motive must now be formulated once more before an example
of its application is given. For in its capacity of one among many
principles of investigating it, it not only determines this example;
what is more, the motive itself furnishes the material of the ap-
plication to be described.

§ 1 . Contents (Materials) vs. Forms of Social Life

The motive derives from two propositions. One is that in
any human society one can distinguish between its content and
its form. The other is that society itself, in general, refers to the
interaction among individuals. This interaction always arises on
the basis of certain drives or for the sake of certain purposes.
Erotic instincts, objective interests, religious impulses, and pur-
poses of defense or attack, of play or gain, of aid or instruction,
and countless others cause man to live with other men, to act
for them, with them, against them, and thus to arrange their con-
ditions reciprocally — in brief, to influence others and to be
influenced by them. The significance of these interactions lies
in their causing the individuals who possess those instincts, in-
terests, etc., to form a unit — precisely, a “society." Everything
present in the individuals (who are the immediate, concrete data
of all historical reality) in the form of drive, interest, purpose,
inclination, psychic state, movement — everything that is present
in them in such a way as to engender or mediate effects upon

The Autonomization of Contents 41

others or to receive such effects, I designate as the content, as the
material, as it were, of sociation. In themselves, these materials
with which life is filled, the motivations by which it is propelled,
are not social. Strictly speaking, neither hunger nor love, neither
work nor religiosity, neither technology nor the functions and
results of intelligence, are social. They are factors in sociation
only when they transform the mere aggregation of isolated indi-
viduals into specific forms of being with and for one another —
forms that are subsumed under the general concept of interac-
tion. Sociation thus is the form (realized in innumerable, dif-
ferent ways) in which individuals grow together into units that
satisfy their interests. These interests, whether they are sensuous
or ideal, momentary or lasting, conscious or unconscious, causal
or teleological, form the basis of human societies.

§ 2 . The Autonomization of Contents

These facts have very far-reaching consequences. On the basis
of practical conditions and necessities, our intelligence, will,
creativity, and feeling work on the materials that we wish to
wrest from life. In accord with our purposes, we give these ma-
terials certain* forms and only in these forms operate and use
them as elements of our lives. But it happens that these materials,
these forces and interests, in a peculiar manner remove them-
selves from the service of life that originally produced and em-
ployed them. They become autonomous in the sense that they
are no longer inseparable from the objects which they formed
and thereby made available to our purposes. They come to play
freely in themselves and for their own sake; they produce or
make use of materials that exclusively serve their own operation
or realization.

For instance, originally all cognition appears to have been
a means in the struggle for existence. Exact knowledge of the
behavior of things is, in fact, of extraordinary utility for the
maintenance and promotion of life. Yet cognition is no longer
used in the service of this practical achievement: science has
become a value in itself. It quite autonomously chooses its ob-
jects, shapes them according to its own needs, and is interested
in nothing beyond its own perfection. Another example: the

42 Sociability

interpretation of realities, concrete or abstract, in terms of spatial
systems, or of rhythms or sounds, or of significance and organiza-
tion, certainly had its origins in practical needs. Yet these inter-
pretations have become purposes in themselves, effective on
their own strength and in their own right, selective and creative
quite independently of their entanglement with practical life,
and not because of it. This is the origin of art. Fully established,
art is wholly separated from life. It takes from it only what it
can use, thus creating itself, as it were, a second time. And yet
the forms by means of which it does this and of which it actually
consists, were produced by the exigencies and the very dynamics
of life.

The same dialectic determines the nature of law. The re-
quirements of social existence compel or legitimate certain types
of individual behavior which thus are valid and followed, pre-
cisely because they meet these practical requirements. Yet with
the emergence of “law,** this reason for their diffusion recedes
into the background: now they are followed simply because they
have become the “law,** and quite independently of the life
which originally engendered and directed them. The furthest
pole of this development is expressed by the idea of ''fiat justitia,
pereat mundus** [justice be done, even if the world perish]. In
other words, although lawful behavior has its roots in the pur-
poses of social life, law, properly speaking, has no “purpose,**
since it is not a means to an ulterior end. On the contrary, it
determines, in its own right and not by legitimation through
any higher, extrinsic agency, how the contents of life should be
shaped.

This complete turnover, from the determination of the forms
by the materials of life to the determination of its materials by
forms that have become supreme values, is perhaps most exten-
sively at work in the numerous phenomena that we lump to-
gether under the category of play. Actual forces, needs, impulses
of life produce the forms of our behavior that are suitable for
play. These forms, however, become independent contents and
stimuli within play itself or, rather, as play. There are, for in-
stance, the hunt; the gain by ruse; the proving of physical and
intellectual strength; competition; and the dependence on
chance and on the favor of powers that cannot be influenced.

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 4S

All these forms are lifted out of the flux of life and freed of their
material with its inherent gravity. On their own decision, they
choose or create the objects in which they prove or embody
themselves in their purity. This is what gives play both its gaiety
and the symbolic significance by which it is distinguished from
mere joke. Here lies whatever may justify the analogy between
art and play. In both art and play, forms that were originally
developed by the realities of life, have created spheres that pre-
serve their autonomy in the face of these realities. It is from their
origin, which keeps them permeated with life, that they draw
their depth and strength. Where they are emptied of life, they
become artifice and “empty play,“ respectively. Yet their sig-
nificance and their very nature derive from that fundamental
change through which the forms engendered by the purposes and
materials of life, are separated from them, and themselves be-
come the purpose and the material of their own existence. From
the realities of life they take only what they can adapt to their
own nature, only what they can absorb in their autonomous
existence.

§ 3, Sociability as the Autonomous Form, or
Play-Form, of Sociation

This process also is at work in the separation of what I have
called content and form in societal existence. Here, “society,”
properly speaking, is that being with one another, for one an-
other, against one another which, through the vehicle of drives
or purposes, forms and develops material or individual contents
and interests. The forms in which this process results gain their
own life. It is freed from all ties with contents. It exists for its
own sake and for the sake of the fascination which, in its own
liberation from these ties, it diffuses. It is precisely the phenome-
non that we call sociability.

Certainly, specific needs and interests make men band to-
gether in economic associations, blood brotherhoods, religious
societies, hordes of bandits. Yet in addition to their specific con-
tents, all these sociations are also characterized, precisely, by a
feeling, among their members, of being sociated and by the
satisfaction derived from this. Sociates feel that the formation

44 Sociability

of a society as such is a value; they are driven toward this form
of existence. In fact, it sometimes is only this drive itself that
suggests the concrete contents of a particular sociation. What
may be called the art drive, extracts out of the totality of phe-
nomena their mere form, in order to shape it into specific struc-
tures that correspond to this drive. In similar fashion, out of the
realities of social life, the “sociability drive” extracts the pure
process of sociation as a cherished value; and thereby it con-
stitutes sociability in the stricter sense of the word. It is no mere
accident of linguistic usage that even the most primitive so-
ciability, if it is of any significance and duration at all, places
so much emphasis on form, on “good form.” For form is the
mutual determination and interaction of the elements of the
association. It is form by means of which they create a unit. The
actual, life-conditioned motivations of sociation are of no sig-
nificance to sociability. It is, therefore, understandable that the
pure form, the individuals* suspended, interacting interre-
latedness (we might say), is emphasized the more strongly and
effectively.

Sociability is spared the frictions with reality by its merely
formal relation to it. Yet just because of this, it derives from
reality, even to the mind of the more sensitive person, a sig-
nificance and a symbolic, playful richness of life that are the
greater, the more perfect it is. A superficial rationalism always
looks for this richness among concrete contents only. Since it does
not find it there, it dispenses with sociability as a shallow foolish-
ness. Yet it cannot be without significance that in many, perhaps
in all European languages, “society” simply designates a sociable
gathering. Certainly, the political, economic, the purposive so-
ciety of whatever description, is a “society.” But only the “so-
ciable society’* is “a society” without qualifying adjectives.^ It is
this, precisely because it represents the pure form that is raised
above all contents such as characterize those more “concrete”
“societies.” It gives us an abstract image in which all contents
are dissolved in the mere play of form.

***G€sellschaft** is both “society” and “party” (in the sense of “social, or
sociable, gathering”). — Tr.

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 45

[a] UNREALITY, TACT, IMPERSONALITY

As a sociological category, I thus designate sociability as the
play-form of sociation. Its relation to content-determined, con-
crete sociation is similar to that of the work of art to reality. The
great, perhaps the greatest, problem of society finds in it a solu-
tion which is possible nowhere else. This problem is the question
concerning the proportions of significance and weight that, in
the total life of the individual, are properly his, and properly
those of his social sphere's. Inasmuch as in the purity of its mani-
festations, sociability has no objective purpose, no content, no
extrinsic results, it entirely depends on the personalities among
whom it occurs. Its aim is nothing but the success of the sociable
moment and, at most, a memory of it. Hence the conditions and
results of the process of sociability are exclusively the persons
who find themselves at a social gathering. Its character is de-
termined by such personal qualities as amiability, refinement,
cordiality, and many other sources of attraction. But precisely
because everything depends on their personalities, the partici-
pants are not permitted to stress them too conspicuously. Where
specific interests (in cooperation or collision) determine the
social form, it is these interests that prevent the individual from
presenting his peculiarity and uniqueness in too unlimited and
independent a manner. Where there are no such interests, their
function must be taken over by other conditions. In sociability,
these derive from the mere form of the gathering. Without the
reduction of personal poignancy and autonomy brought about
by this form, the gathering itself would not be possible. Tact^
therefore, is here of such a peculiar significance: where no ex-
ternal or immediate egoistic interests direct the self-regulation
of the individual in his personal relations with others, it is tact
that fulfills this regulatory function. Perhaps its most essential
task is to draw the limits, which result from the claims of others,
of the individual's impulses, ego-stresses, and intellectual and
material desires.

Sociability emerges as a very peculiar sociological structure.
The fact is that whatever the participants in the gathering may
possess in terms of objective attributes — attributes that are cen-
tered outside the particular gathering in question — must not

46 Sociability

enter it. Wealth, social position, erudition, fame, exceptional
capabilities and merits, may not play any part in sociability. At
most they may perform the role of mere nuances of that imma-
terial character with which reality alone, in general, is allowed
to enter the social work of art called sociability. But in addition
to these objective elements that, as it were, surround the per-
sonality, the purely and deeply personal traits of one's life, char-
acter, mood, and fate must likewise be eliminated as factors in
sociability. It is tactless, because it militates against interaction
which monopolizes sociability, to display merely personal moods
of depression, excitement, despondency — in brief, the light and
the darkness of one’s most intimate life. This exclusion of the
most personal element extends even to certain external features
of behavior. Thus, for instance, at an intimately personal and
friendly meeting with one or several men, a lady would not
appear in as low-cut a dress as she wears without any embarrass-
ment at a larger party. The reason is that at the party she does
not feel involved as an individual to the same extent as she does
at the more intimate gathering, and that she can therefore afford
to abandon herself as if in the impersonal freedom of a mask:
although being only herself she is yet not wholly herself, but
only an element in a group that is held together formally.

[b] “sociability thresholds”

Man in his totality is a dynamic complex of ideas, forces, and
possibilities. According to the motivations and relations of life
and its changes, he makes of himself a differentiated and clearly
defined phenomenon. As an economic and political man, as a
family member, and as the representative of an occupation he is,
as it were, an elaboration constructed ad hoc. In each of these
capacities, the material of his life is determined by a particular
idea and is cast into a particular form. Yet, the relative autonomy
of his roles feeds on a common source of his energy, which is
difficult to label. Sociable man, too, is a peculiar phenomenon;
it exists nowhere except in sociable relations. On the one hand,
man has here cast off all objective qualifications of his per-
sonality. He enters the form of sociability equipped only with
the capacities, attractions, and interests with which his pure

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 47

human-ness provides him. On the other hand, however, socia-
bility also Shies away from the entirely subjective and purely
inwardly spheres of his personality. Discretion, which is the first
condition of sociability in regard to one’s behavior toward others,
is equally much required in regard to one’s dealing with oneself:
in both cases, its violation causes the sociological art form of
sociability to degenerate into a sociological naturalism. One thus
may speak of the individual’s upper and lower ''sociability
thresholds/' These thresholds are passed both when individuals
interact from motives of objective content and purpose and
when their entirely personal and subjective aspects make them-
selves felt. In both cases, sociability ceases to be the central and
formative principle of their sociation and becomes, at best, a
formalistic, superficially mediating connection.

[c] THE “sociability DRIVE’’ AND THE DEMOCRATIC NATURE
OF SOCIABILITY

Perhaps it is possible, however, to find the positive formal
motive of sociability which corresponds to its negative determi-
nation by limits and thresholds. As the foundation of law, Kant
posited the axjom that each individual should possess freedom
to the extent which is compatible with the freedom of every
other individual. If we apply this principle to the sociability
drive (as the source or substance of sociability itself), we might
say that each individual ought to have as much satisfaction of
this drive as is compatible with its satisfaction on the part of all
others. We can also express this thought not in terms of the so-
ciability drive itself but in terms of its results. We then formulate
the principle of sociability as the axiom that each individual
should offer the maximum of sociable values (of joy, relief, liveli-
ness, etc.) that is compatible with the maximum of values he
himself receives.

Just as Kant’s law is thoroughly democratic, this principle,
too, shows the democratic structure of all sociability. Yet, this
democratic character can be realized only within a given social
stratum: sociability among members of very different social
strata often is inconsistent and painful. Equality, as we have seen,
results from the elimination of both the wholly personal and

48 Sociability

the wholly objective, that is, from the elimination of the very
material of sociation from which sociation is freed when it takes
on the form of sociability. Yet the democracy of sociability even
among social equals is only something played. Sociability, if one
will, creates an ideal sociological world in which the pleasure
of the individual is closely tied up with the pleasure of the others.
In principle, nobody can find satisfaction here if it has to be at
the cost of diametrically opposed feelings which the other may
have. This possibility, to be sure, is excluded by many social
forms other than sociability. In all of these, however, it is ex-
cluded through some superimposed ethical imperative. In socia-
bility alone is it excluded by the intrinsic principle of the social
form itself.

[d] THE ARTIFICIAL WORLD OF SOCIABILITY

Yet, this world of sociability — the only world in which a
democracy of the equally privileged is possible without fric-
tions — is an artificial world. It is composed of individuals who
have no other desire than to create wholly pure interaction with
others which is not disbalanced by a stress of anything material.
We may have the erroneous notion that we enter sociability
purely '‘as men,’' as what we really are, without all the burdens,
conflicts, all the too-much and too-little which in actual life dis-
turb the purity of our images. We may get this notion because
modern life is overburdened with objective contents and exi-
gencies. And forgetting these daily encumbrances at a social
gathering, we fancy ourselves to return to our natural-personal
existence. But under this impression we also forget that sociable
man is constituted by this personal aspect, not in its specific
character and in its naturalistic completeness, but only in a cer-
tain reservedness and stylization. In earlier periods of history,
sociable man did not have to be wrested from so many objective
and contentual claims. His form, therefore, emerged more fully
and distinctly in contrast with his personal existence: behavior
at a social gathering was much stiffer, more ceremonial, and more
severely regulated super-individually than it is today. This reduc-
tion of the personal character which homogeneous interaction
with others imposes on the individual may even make him lean

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 49

over backward, if we may say so: a characteristically sociable be-
havior trait is the courtesy with which the strong and extraordi-
nary individual not only makes himself the equal of the weaker,
but even acts as if the weaker were the more valuable and
superior.

If sociation itself is interaction, its purest and most stylized
expression occurs among equals — as symmetry and balance are
the most plausible forms of artistic stylization. Inasmuch as it is
abstracted from sociation through art or play, sociability thus
calls for the purest, most transparent, and most casually appeal-
ing kind of interaction, that among equals. Because of its very
nature, it must create human beings who give up so much of their
objective contents and who so modify their external and internal
significance as to become sociable equals. Each of them must
gain for himself sociability values only if the others with whom
he interacts also gain them. Sociability is the game in which one
‘'does as if’* all were equal, and at the same time, as if one honored
each of them in particular. And to “do as if” is no more a lie
than play or art are lies because of their deviation from reality.
The game becomes a lie only when sociable action and speech are
made into mere instruments of the intentions and events of
practical realty — just as a painting becomes a lie when it tries,
in a panoramic effect, to simulate reality. What is perfectly cor-
rect and in order if practised within the autonomous life of so-
ciability with its self-contained play of forms, becomes a decep-
tive lie when it is guided by non-sociable purposes or is designed
to disguise such purposes. The actual entanglement of sociability
with the events of real life surely makes such a deception often
very tempting.

[e] SOCIAL GAMES

The connection between sociability and play explains why
sociability should cover all phenomena that already by them-
selves may be considered sociological play-forms. This refers
above all to games proper, which in the sociability of all times
have played a conspicuous role. The expression ''social game”
is significant in the deeper sense to which I have already called
attention. All the forms of interaction or sociation among men —
the wish to outdo, exchange, the formation of parties, the desire

50 Sociability

to wrest something from the other, the hazards of accidental
meetings and separations, the change between enmity and co-
operation, the overpowering by ruse and revenge — in the seri-
ousness of reality, all of these are imbued with purposive con-
tents. In the game, they lead their own lives; they are propelled
exclusively by their own attraction. For even where the game
involves a monetary stake, it is not the money (after all, it could
be acquired in many ways other than gambling) that is the
specific characteristic of the game. To the person who really
enjoys it, its attraction rather lies in the dynamics and hazards
of the sociologically significant forms of activity themselves. The
more profound, double sense of ''social game*’ is that not only
the game is played in a society (as its external medium) but that,
with its help, people actually ''play** "society.**

[f] COQUETRY

In the sociology of sex, we find a play-form: the play-form of
eroticism is coquetry. In sociability, it finds its most facile, play-
ful, and widely diffused realization.® Generally speaking, the
erotic question between the sexes is that of offer and refusal. Its
objects are, of course, infinitely varied and graduated, and by no
means mere either-ors, much less exclusively physiological. The
nature of feminine coquetry is to play up, alternately, allusive
promises and allusive withdrawals — to attract the male but
always to stop short of a decision, and to reject him but never
to deprive him of all hope. The coquettish woman enormously
enhances her attractiveness if she shows her consent as an almost
immediate possibility but is ultimately not serious about it. Her
behavior swings back and forth between “yes’* and "no** without
stopping at either. She playfully exhibits the pure and simple
form of erotic decisions and manages to embody their polar
opposites in a perfectly consistent behavior: its decisive, well-
understood content, that would commit her to one of the two
opposites, does not even enter.

This freedom from all gravity of immutable contents and
permanent realities gives coquetry the character of suspension,

5 1 have treated coquetry extensively in my book, Philosophische Kultur
[Philosophic Culture].

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 51

distance, ideality, that has led one to speak, with a certain right,
of its ‘‘art,” not only of its “artifices.” Yet in order for coquetry
to grow on the soil of sociability, as we know from experience
it does, it must meet with a specific behavior on the part of the
male. As long as he rejects its attractions or, inversely, is its mere
victim that without any will of his own is dragged along by its
vacillations between a half “yes” and a half “no,” coquetry has
not yet assumed for him the form that is commensurate with
sociability. For it lacks the free interaction and equivalence of
elements that are the fundamental traits of sociability. It does
not attain these until he asks for no more than this freely sus-
pended play which only dimly reflects the erotically definitive as
a remote symbol; until he is no longer attracted by the lust for the
erotic element or by the fear of it which is all he can see in the
coquettish allusions and preliminaries. Coquetry that unfolds
its charms precisely at the height of sociable civilization has left
far behind the reality of erotic desire, consent, or refusal; it is
embodied in the interaction of the mere silhouettes, as it were, of
their serious imports. Where they themselves enter or are con-
stantly present in the background, the whole process becomes a
private affair between two individuals: it takes place on the plane
of reality. But under the sociological sign of sociability from
which the center of the personality's concrete and complete life
is barred, coquetry is the flirtatious, perhaps ironical play, in
which eroticism has freed the bare outline of its interactions from
their materials and contents and personal features. As sociability
plays with the forms of society, so coquetry plays with those of
eroticism, and this affinity of their natures predestines coquetry
as an element of sociability.

[g] CONVERSATION

Outside sociability, the sociological forms of interaction are
significant in terms of their contents. Sociability abstracts these
forms and supplies them — ^which circle around themselves, as
it were — ^with shadowy bodies. The extent to which it attains this
aim — becomes evident, finally, in conversation, the most general
vehicle for all that men have in common. The decisive point
here can be introduced by stressing the very trivial experience

52 Sociability

that people talk seriously because of some content they want to
communicate or come to an understanding about, while at a
social gathering they talk for the sake of talking. There, talk be-
comes its own purpose; but not in the naturalistic sense that
would make it mere chatter, but as the art of conversation that
has its own, artistic laws. In purely sociable conversation, the
topic is merely the indispensable medium through which the
lively exchange of speech itself unfolds its attractions. All the
forms in which this exchange is realized — quarrel, appeal to
norms recognized by both parties, pacification by compromise
and by discovery of common convictions, grateful acceptance of
the new, and covering up of anything on which no understanding
can be hoped for — all these forms usually are in the service of
the countless contents and purposes of human life. But here, they
derive their significance from themselves, from the fascinating
play of relations which they create among the participants, join-
ing and loosening, winning and succumbing, giving and taking.
The double sense of **sich unterhalten*' ® becomes understand-
able. For conversation to remain satisfied with mere form it can-
not allow any content to become significant in its own right. As
soon as the discussion becomes objective, as soon as it makes the
ascertainment of a truth its purpose (it may very well be its con-
tent), it ceases to be sociable and thus becomes untrue to its own
nature — as much as if it degenerated into a serious quarrel. The
form of the ascertainment of a truth or of a quarrel may exist,
but the seriousness of their contents may as little become the
focus of sociable conversation as a perspectivistic painting may
contain a piece of the actual, three-dimensional reality of its
object.

This does not imply that the content of sociable conversation
is indifferent. On the contrary, it must be interesting, fascinating,
even important. But it may not become the purpose of the con-
versation, which must never be after an objective result. The
objective result leads an ideal existence, as it were, outside of it.
Therefore, of two externally similar conversations, only that is

• This double sense is not obvious in English. *'Unterhalten” literally is “to

hold under/' “to sustain." Customarily, however, **sich unterhalten'* is “to enter-
tain or enjoy oneself," as well as “to converse.” This is the double sense Simmel
emphasizes. — Tr.

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 53

(properly speaking) sociable, in which the topic, in spite of all
its value and attraction, finds its right, place, and purpose only
in the functional play of the conversation itself that sets its own
norms and has its own peculiar significance. The ability to
change topics easily and quickly is therefore part of the nature
of social conversation. For since the topic is merely a means, it
exhibits all the fortuitousness and exchangeability that charac-
terize all means as compared with fixed ends. As has already been
mentioned, sociability presents perhaps the only case in which
talk is its own legitimate purpose. Talk presupposes two parties;
it is two-way. In fact, among all sociological phenomena what-
ever, with the possible exception of looking at one another, talk
is the purest and most sublimated form of two-way-ness. It thus
is the fulfillment of a relation that wants to be nothing but
relation — in which, that is, what usually is the mere form of
interaction becomes its self-sufficient content. Hence even the
telling of stories, jokes, and anecdotes, though often only a
pastime if not a testimonial of intellectual poverty, can show all
the subtle tact that reflects the elements of sociability. It keeps
the conversation away from individual intimacy and from all
purely personal elements that cannot be adapted to sociable re-
quirements. ^nd yet, objectivity is cultivated not for the sake of
any particular content but only in the interest of sociability
itself. The telling and reception of stories, etc., is not an end in
itself but only a means for the liveliness, harmony, and common
consciousness of the ' ‘party. It not only provides a content in
which all can participate alike; it also is a particular individual’s
gift to the group — but a gift behind which its giver becomes
invisible: the subtlest and best-told stories are those from which
the narrator’s personality has completely vanished. The perfect
anecdote attains a happy equilibrium of sociable ethics, as it
were, with its complete absorption of both subjective-individual
and objective-contentual elements in the service of pure sociable
form.

[h] SOCIABILITY AS THE PLAY-FORM OF ETHICAL PROBLEMS
AND OF THEIR SOLUTION

Thus sociability also emerges as the play-form of the ethical
forces in concrete society. In particular, there are two problems

54 Sociability

that must be solved by these forces. One is the fact that the
individual has to function as part of a collective for which he
lives; but that, in turn, he derives his own values and improve-
ments from this collective. The other is the fact that the life
of the individual is a roundabout route for the purposes of the
whole; but that the life of the whole, in turn, has this same
function for the purposes of the individual. Sociability transfers
the serious, often tragic character of these problems into the
symbolic play of its shadowy realm which knows no frictions,
since shadows, being what they are, cannot collide. Another
ethical task of sociation is to make the joining and breaking-up
of sociated individuals the exact reflection of the relations
among these individuals, although these relations are spon-
taneously determined by life in its totality. In sociability, this
freedom to form relations and this adequacy of their expression
are relieved of any concrete contentual determinants. The ways
in which groups form and split up and in which conversations,
called forth by mere impulse and occasion, begin, deepen, loosen,
and terminate at a social gathering give a miniature picture of
the societal ideal that might be called the freedom to be tied
down. If all convergence and divergence are strictly commensur-
ate with inner realities, at a “party” they exist in the absence of
these realities. There is left nothing but a phenomenon whose
play obeys the laws of its own form and whose charm is contained
in itself. It shows aesthetically that same commensurateness
which those inner realities require as ethical commensurateness.

[i] HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS

Our general conception of sociability is well illustrated by
certain historical developments. In the early German Middle
Ages, there existed brotherhoods of knights. They consisted of
patrician families that entertained friendly relations with one
another. The originally religious and practical purposes of these
groups seem to have been lost fairly early. By the fourteenth
century, knightly interests and ways of behavior alone were left
as their contentual characteristics. Soon afterward, however, even
they disappeared, and there remained nothing but purely so-
ciable aristocratic associations. Here then, evidently, is a case

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 55

where sociability developed as the residuum of a society that had
been determined by its content. It is a residuum which, since all
content was lost, could consist only of the form and forms of
reciprocal behavior.

The fact that the autonomy of such forms is bound to exhibit
the nature of play or, more deeply, of art, becomes even more
striking in the courtly society of the Ancien Regime. Here, the
disappearance of any concrete content of life — ^which royalty,
so to speak, had sucked out of French aristocracy — ^resulted in
the emergence of certain freely suspended forms. The conscious-
ness of the nobility became crystallized in them. Their forces,
characteristics, and relations were purely sociable. They were
by no means symbols or functions of any real significances or
intensities of persons and institutions. The etiquette of courtly
society had become a value in itself. It no longer referred to any
content; it had developed its own, intrinsic laws, which were
comparable to the laws of art. The laws of art are valid only in
terms of art: by no means have they the purpose of imitating the
reality of the models, of things outside of art itself.

[j] THE “superficial” CHARACTER OF SOCIABILITY

•

In the Ancien Regime ^ sociability attained perhaps its most
sovereign expression. At the same time, however, this expression
came close to being its own caricature. Certainly, it is the nature
of sociability to free concrete interactions from any reality and
to erect its airy realm according to the form-laws of these rela-
tions, which come to move in themselves and to recognize no
purpose extraneous to them. Yet the deep spring which feeds this
realm and its play does not lie in these forms, but exclusively in
the vitality of concrete individuals, with all their feelings and
attractions, convictions and impulses. Sociability is a symbol of
life as life emerges in the flux of a facile and happy play; yet it
also is a symbol of life. It does not change the image of life beyond
the point required by its own distance to it. In like manner, if
it is not to strike one as hollow and false, even the freest and most
fantastic art, however far it is from any copying of reality, never-
theless feeds on a deep and loyal relation to this reality. Art, too,
is above life, but it is also above life. If sociability entirely cuts

56 Sociability

its ties with the reality of life out of which it makes its own fabric
(of however different a style), it ceases to be a play and becomes
a desultory playing-around with empty forms, a lifeless schema-
tism which is even proud of its lifelessness.

Our discussion shows that people both rightly and wrongly
lament the superficiality of sociable intercourse. To account for
this, we must remember and appreciate one of the most impres-
sive characteristics of intellectual life. This is the fact that if
certain elements are taken out of the totality of existence and
united into a whole that lives by its own laws and not by those
of the totality, it shows, if it is completely severed from the life
of that totality, a hollow and rootless nature, in spite of all in-
trinsic perfection. And yet, and often only by an imponderable
change, this same whole, in its very distance from immediate
reality, may more completely, consistently, and realistically re-
veal the deepest nature of this reality than could any attempt at
grasping it more directly. Applying this consideration to the
phenomenon of sociability, we understand that we may have two
different reactions to it. Accordingly, the independent and self-
regulated life, which the superficial aspects of social interaction
attain in sociability, will strike us as a formula-like and irrelevant
lifelessness, or as a symbolic play whose aesthetic charms embody
the finest and subtlest dynamics of broad, rich social existence.

In regard to art, in regard to all the symbolism of religious
and church life, and to a large extent even in regard to the formu-
lations of science, we depend on a certain faith, or feeling, which
assures us that the intrinsic norms of fragments or the combina-
tions of superficial elements do possess a connection with the
depth and wholeness of reality. Although it can often not be
formulated, it nevertheless is this connection which makes of
fragments embodiments and representations of the immediately
real and fundamental life. It accounts for the redeeming and
relieving effect that some of the realms, constructed of mere
forms of life, have on us: although in them we are unburdened
of life, we nevertheless have it. Thus, the view of the sea frees us
internally, not in spite, but because of the fact that the swelling
and ebbing and the play and counterplay of the waves stylize life
into the simplest expression of its dynamics. This expression is
quite free from all experienceable reality and from all the gravity

Sociability as the Autonomous Form of Sociation 57

of individual fate, whose ultimate significance seems yet to flow
into this picture of the sea. Art similarly seems to reveal the
mystery of life, the fact, that is, that we cannot be relieved of life
by merely looking away from it, but only by shaping and ex-
periencing the sense and the forces of its deepest reality in the
unreal and seemingly quite autonomous play of its forms.

To so many serious persons who are constantly exposed to the
pressures of life, sociability could not offer any liberating, reliev-
ing, or serene aspects if it really were nothing but an escape from
life or a merely momentary suspension of life’s seriousness.
Perhaps it often is no more than a negative conventionalism, an
essentially lifeless exchange of formulas. Perhaps it frequently
was this in the Ancien Regime when the numb fear of a threaten-
ing reality forced men merely to look away and to sever all rela-
tions with it. Yet it is precisely the more serious person who
derives from sociability a feeling of liberation and relief. He can
do so because he enjoys here, as if in an art play, a concentration
and exchange of effects that present all the tasks and all the
seriousness of life in a sublimation and, at the same time, dilu-
tion, in which the content-laden forces of reality reverberate only
dimly, since their gravity has evaporated into mere attractiveness.

Chapter 4

Individual and Society in
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-
Century Views of Life

An Example of Philosophical Sociology

§ 1 -

Individual Life as the Basis of the Conflict
between Individual and Society

THE REALLY PRACTICAL

problem of society is the relation between its forces and forms
and the individual’s own life. The question is not whether society
exists only in the individuals or also outside of them. For even if
we attribute ''life,” properly speaking, only to individuals, and
identify the life of society with that of its individual members,
we must still admit the existence of conflict between the two.
One reason for this conflict is the fact that, in the individuals
themselves, social elements fuse into the particular phenomenon
called "society.” "Society” develops its own vehicles and organs
by whose claims and commands the individual is confronted as
by an alien party. A second reason results from another aspect of
the inherency of society in the individual. For man has the
capacity to decompose himself into parts and to feel any one of
these as his proper seif. Yet each part may collide with any other
and may struggle for the dominion over the individual’s actions.
This capacity places man, insofar as he feels himself to be a social
being, into an often contradictory relation with those among his
impulses and interests that are not preempted by his social char-
acter. In other words, the conflict between society and individual

Individual Egoism vs. Individual Self-Perfection 59

is continued in the individual himself as the conflict among his
component parts. Thus, it seems to me, the basic struggle between
society and individual inheres in the general form of individual
life. It does not derive from any single, '‘anti-social,” individual
interest.

Society strives to be a whole, an organic unit of which the
individuals must be mere members. Society asks of the individual
that he employ all his strength in the service of the special func-
tion which he has to exercise as a member of it; that he so modify
himself as to become the most suitable vehicle for this function.
Yet the drive toward unity and wholeness that is characteristic
of the individual himself rebels against this role. The individual
strives to be rounded out in himself, not merely to help to round
out society. He strives to develop his full capacities, irrespective
of the shifts among them that the interest of society may ask of
him. This conflict between the whole, which imposes the one-
sidedness of partial function upon its elements, and the part,
which itself strives to be a whole, is insoluble. No house can be
built of houses, but only of specially formed stones; no tree can
grow from trees, but only from differentiated cells.

§ 2 . Individml Egoism vs. Individual Self-Perfection
as an Objective Value

The formulation presented seems to me to describe the con-
trast between the two parties much more comprehensively than
does its customary reduction to the egoism-altruism dichotomy.
On the one hand, the individual’s striving for wholeness appears
as egoism, which is contrasted with the altruism of his ordering
himself into society as a selectivity formed social member of it.
Yet on the other hand, the very quest of society is an egoism that
does violence to the individual for the benefit and utility of the
many, and that often makes for an extremely one-sided indi-
vidual specialization, and even atrophy. Finally, the individual’s
urge toward self-perfection is not necessarily an expression of
egoism. It may also be an objective ideal whose goal is by no
means success in terms of happiness and narrowly personal in-
terests but a super-personal value realized in the personality.

What has just l^en suggested — ^and what will be elaborated

60 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

presently — appears to me to exemplify a very significant stage in
the development of cultural-philosophical consciousness. It also
throws new light on the ethics of the individual and, indirectly,
on the ethics of society. It is popularly held that all intentions
which do not break through the orbit of the individual existence
and interest are of an egoistic nature, and that egoism is overcome
only when concern shifts toward the welfare of the Thou or of
society. Yet it is already some time that a deeper reflection on the
values of life has ascertained a third alternative, most impres-
sively perhaps in the figures of Goethe and Nietzsche (though not
in any abstract formula). It is the possibility that the perfection
of the individual as such constitutes an objective value, quite
irrespective of its significance for any other individuals, or in
merely accidental connection with it. This value, moreover,
may exist in utter disregard for the happiness or unhappiness of
this individual himself, or may even be in conflict with them.
What a person represents in terms of strength, nobility of charac-
ter, achievement, or harmony of life, is very often quite unre-
lated to what he or others ‘‘get out'* of these qualities. All that
can be said about them is that the world is enriched by the
existence in it of a valuable human being who is perfect in him-
self. Certainly, his value often consists in his practical devotion
to other individuals or groups; but to limit it to this would be to
proceed by an arbitrary moralistic dogma. For, beauty and per-
fection of life, the working upon oneself, the passionate efforts to
obtain ideal goods, do not always result in happiness. These
efforts and aims are inspired by certain world values, and may
have no other effect than to create and maintain a particular
attitude in the individual consciousness.

Countless times, the individual craves situations, events, in-
sights, achievements, in whose particular existence or general
nature he simply sees ultimately satisfactory aims. Occasionally
the content of such cravings may be the improvement or well-
being of others. But not necessarily: the aim is striven after for
the sake of its own realization; and, therefore, to sacrifice others
or even oneself may not be too high a price. **Fiat justitia, pereat
mundus*'; the fulfillment of divine will merely because it is
divine; the fanaticism of the artist, completion of whose work
makes him forget any other consideration, altruistic or egoistic;

The Social vs. the Human 61

the political idealist’s enthusiasm for a constitutional reform that
renders him entirely indifferent to the question of how the citi-
zens would fare under it — these are examples of purely objective
valuations that permeate even the most trivial contents. The act-
ing individual feels himself to be only the object or executor —
who at bottom is accidental — of the task his cause puts to him.
The passion for this cause is as little concerned with the I, Thou,
or society as the value of the state of the world can be measured
in terms of the world’s pleasure or suffering (although it can,
of course, be partly so measured). Yet, evidently, the claims
made by individuals or groups, insofar as they, too, are agents of
ultimate values, do not necessarily coincide with the individual’s
striving after such objective values. Particularly if he tries to
realize a value either in himself or in an accomplishment that
is unappreciated socially, the super-egoistic nature of his pro-
cedure is not rewarded by society. Society claims the individual
for itself. It wants to make of him a form that it can incorporate
into its own structure. And this societal claim is often so incom-
patible with the claim imposed on the individual by his striving
after an objective value, as only a purely egoistic claim can be
incompatible with a purely social one.

§ 3. The Social vs. the Human

The stage reached by the interpretation presented certainly
goes beyond the customary contrast between egoism and altru-
ism, as I have already pointed out. But even this interpretation
cannot resolve the basic contrast between individual and society.
And a related contrast that deals with the same content but
springs from another ultimate world view is suggested by the
modem analysis of certain sociological concepts.

Society — and its representative in the individual, social-ethi-
cal conscience — very often imposes a specialization upon him.
I have already called attention to the fact that this specialization
not only leaves undeveloped, or destroys, his harmonious whole-
ness. What is more, it often foists contents on the individual that
are wholly inimical to the qualities usually called general-human.
Nietzsche seems to have been the first to feel, with fundamental
distinctness, the difference between the interest of humanity, of

62 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

mankind, and the interest of society. Society is but one of the
forms in which mankind shapes the contents of its life, but it is
neither essential to all forms nor is it the only one in which
human development is realized. All purely objective realms in
which we are involved in whatever way — logical cognition or
metaphysical imagination, the beauty of life or its image in the
sovereignty of art, the realms of religion or of nature — none of
these, to the extent to which they become our intimate posses-
sions, has intrinsically and essentially anything whatever to do
with “society.” The human values that are measured by our
greater or smaller stakes in these ideal realms have a merely
accidental relation to social values, however often they intersect
with them.

On the other hand, purely personal qualities — strength,
beauty, depth of thought, greatness of conviction, kindness,
nobility of character, courage, purity of heart — have their au-
tonomous significance which likewise is entirely independent of
their social entanglements. They are values of human existence.
As such they are profoundly different from social values, which
always rest upon the individual’s effects. At the same time, they
certainly are elements, both as effects and causes, of the social
process. But this is only one side of their significance — the other
is the intrinsic fact of their existence in the personality. For
Nietzsche, this, strictly speaking, immediate existence of man
is the criterion by which the level of mankind must be gauged
at any given moment. For him, all social institutions, all giving
and receiving by which the individual becomes a social being,
are mere preconditions or consequences of his own nature. It is
by virtue of this intrinsic nature that he constitutes a stage in the
development of mankind.

Yet utilitarian-social valuation does not entirely depend on
this intrinsic nature. It also depends on other individuals’ re-
sponses to it. Thus, the individual’s value does not wholly reside
in himself: part of it he receives as the reflection of processes and
creations in which his own nature has fused with beings and
circumstances outside of him. It is on the basis of this relation
between him and others that ethics (above all, Kantian ethics)
has shifted the ground on which to appraise man, from his deeds
to his attitude. Our value lies in our good will — z certain quality

The Social vs. the Human 63

of the ultimate springs of our action that must be left undefined.
It lies behind all appearance of our actions which, along with the
effects they may have, are its mere consequences. They some-
times express it correctly, sometimes distort it — since they are
mere “phenomena,” they have but an accidental relationship to
this fundamental value, good will itself.

Kant’s position was expanded, or conceived more profoundly,
by Nietzsche. He translated the Kantian contrast between atti-
tude and success of external action (which already had freed the
value of the individual from its social dependence) into the
contrast between the existence and the effect of man in general.
For Nietzsche, it is the qualitative being of the personality which
marks the stage that the development of mankind has reached;
it is the highest exemplars of a given time that carry humanity
beyond its past. Thus Nietzsche overcame the limitations of
merely social existence, as well as the valuation of man in terms
of his sheer effects. It thus is not only quantitatively that mankind
is more than society. Mankind is not simply the sum of all
societies: it is an entirely different synthesis of the same elements
that in other syntheses result in societies. Mankind and societies
are two different vantage points, as it were, from which the indi-
vidual can be viewed. They measure him by different standards,
and their claims on him may be in violent conflict. What ties us
to mankind and what we may contribute to the development of
mankind — religious and scientific contributions, inter-family
and international interests, the aesthetic perfection of person-
ality, and purely objective production that aims at no “utility” —
all this, of course, may on occasion also help develop the histori-
cal society of which we are members. But, essentially, it is rooted
in claims that go far beyond any given society and that serve
the elevation and objective enrichment of the type “man” itself.
They may even be in pointed conflict with the more specific
claims of the group that for any given man represents “his so-
ciety.”

In many other respects, however, society promotes a leveling
of its members. It creates an average and makes it extremely diffi-
cult for its members to go beyond this average merely through
the individual excellence in the quantity or quality of life. So-
ciety requires the individual to differentiate himself from the

64 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

humanly general, but forbids him to stand out from the socially
general. The individual is thus doubly oppressed by the stand-
ards of society: he may not transcend them either in a more
general or in a more individual direction. In recent historical
periods, these conflicts into which he falls with his political
group, with his family, with his economic association, with his
party, with his religious community, etc., have eventually be-
come sublimated into the abstract need, as it were, for individual
freedom. This is the general category that came to cover what
was common in the various complaints and self-assertions of the
individual against society.

The Eighteenth Century

[a] THE FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The need for freedom in general, for the severance of the
ties between society as such and individual as such, found its
most highly developed consciousness and its strongest effects in
the eighteenth century. This fundamental quest can be observed,
in its economic form, in the Physiocrats' praise of free competi-
tion of individual interests as the natural order of things; in its
sentimental elaboration, in Rousseau's notion of the rape of man
by historical society as the origin of all corruption and evil; in
its political aspect, in the French Revolution's intensification of
the idea of individual liberty to the point of prohibiting workers
from associating even for the protection of their own interests;
in its philosophical sublimation, in Kant's and Fichte's concep-
tions of the ego as the bearer of the cognizable world and of its
absolute autonomy as the moral value as such. The inadequacy
of the socially accepted forms of life of the eighteenth century, in
contrast with its material and intellectual productions, struck
the consciousness of the individual as an unbearable limitation
of his energies. Examples of these restrictive forms of life are
the privileges of the higher estates, the despotic control of com-
merce and life in general, the still potent survivals of the guilds,
the intolerant coercion by the church, the feudal obligations of
the peasantry, the political tutelage dominating the life of the
state, and the weakness of municipal constitutions. The oppres-
siveness of these and similar institutions which had lost their

The Eighteenth Century 65

inner justifications, resulted in the ideal of the mere liberty of
the individual. It was believed that the removal of these ties,
which pressed the forces of the personality into unnatural
grooves, would result in the unfolding of all the inner and outer
values (that were there potentially, but whose free action was
paralyzed politically, economically, and religiously), and would
lead society out of the epoch of historical unreason into that of
natural reason. Since nature did not know any of these ties, the
ideal of freedom appeared as that of the “natural’ * state. If na-
ture is conceived, as the original existence of our species, as well
as of each individual, as the starting point of the cultural process
(irrespective of the ambiguity of “original,” which may stand
for “first in time” or for “essential and basic”), the eighteenth
century tried to reconnect, in a gigantic synthesis, the end or
peak of this process with its starting point. The freedom of the
individual was too empty and weak to carry his existence; since
historical forces no longer filled and supported it, it could now
be filled and supported by the idea that it was merely necessary
to gain this freedom as purely and completely as possible to re-
capture the original basis of the existence of our species and of
our personality, a basis which was as certain and fruitful as
nature itself.

[b] THE ANTINOMY BETWEEN FREEDOM AND EQUALITY

Yet this need for the freedom of the individual who feels
himself restricted and deformed by historical society results in a
self-contradiction once it is put into practice. For evidently, it
can be put into practice permanently only if society exclusively
consists of individuals who externally as well as internally are
equally strong and equally privileged. Yet this condition exists
nowhere. On the contrary, the power-giving and rank-determin-
ing forces of men are, in principle, unequal, both qualitatively
and quantitatively. Therefore, complete freedom necessarily
leads to the exploitation of this inequality by the more privileged,
to the exploitation of the stupid by the clever, of the weak
by the strong, of the timid by the grasping. The elimination of all
external impediments must result in the expression of different
inner potentialities in correspondingly different external posi-
tions. Institutionalized freedom is made illusory by personal

66 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

relations. Furthermore, since in all power relations an advantage
once gained facilitates the gaining of additional advantages (the
'‘accumulation of capital” is merely a specific instance of this
general proposition), power inequality is bound to expand in
quick progression, and the freedom of the privileged always and
necessarily develops at the expense of the freedom of the op-
pressed.

For this reason it was quite legitimate to raise the paradoxical
question whether the socialization of all means of production
is not the only condition of free competition. For, only by forcibly
taking from the individual the possibility of fully exploiting his
superiority over the weaker, can an equal measure of freedom
reign throughout society. Therefore, if it is this ideal that is
aimed at, “socialism” does not refer to the suspension of freedom.
Rather, socialism suspends only that which, at any given degree
of freedom, becomes the means for suppressing the freedom of
some in favor of others. This means is private property. It is
more than the expression of individual differences; it multiplies
them; it intensifies them to the point, to put it radically, where
at one pole of the society a maximum of freedom has developed,
and at the other, a minimum. Full freedom of each can obtain
only if there is full equality with everybody else. But as long as
the economic set-up permits the exploitation of personal superi-
orities, this equality is unattainable both in strictly personal and
in economic matters. Only when this exploitation is eliminated;
when, that is, the private ownership of the means of production
is suspended, is economic equality possible. Only then is there
no longer a barrier to freedom — a barrier which is inseparable
from inequality. It is precisely this possibility of exploiting per-
sonal superiorities which conclusively shows the deep antinomy
between freedom and equality: the antinomy can be resolved
only if both are dragged down to the negative level of property-
lessness and powerlessness.

In the eighteenth century, only Goethe seems to have seen
this antinomy with full clarity. Equality, he said, demands sub-
mission to a general norm; freedom “strives toward the uncondi-
tional.” “Legislators or revolutionaries,” he pointed out, “who
promise at the same time equality and freedom are fantasts or
charlatans.” Perhaps it was an instinctive intuition of this condi-

The Eighteenth Century 67

tion which made for the addition, to freedom and equality, of
a third requirement: fraternity. For the rejection of coercion as
a means of resolving the contradiction between freedom and
equality leaves as this means only emphatic altruism. Equality,
after being destroyed by freedom, can be re-established only
through the ethical renunciation to utilize natural gifts. Except
for this notion, however, the typical individualism of the eight-
eenth century is completely blind to the intrinsic difficulty of
freedom. The intellectual limitations and the restrictions by
estates, guilds, and the church, against which it fought, had
created innumerable inequalities whose injustices were deeply
felt but were seen to derive from merely external-historical ori-
gins. The removal of these institutions, which was bound to
eliminate the inequalities caused by therriy was therefore thought
to eliminate all inequalities. Freedom and equality thus ap-
peared as self-evidently harmonious aspects of the same human
ideal.

[c] ‘'natural man'*

This ideal was carried by still another and deeper historical
current, the peculiar contemporaneous conception of nature.
In its theoretical interests, the eighteenth century was decisively
oriented toward the natural sciences. Continuing the work of
the seventeenth, it established the modern concept of natural
law as the highest ideal of cognition. This concept, however,
eliminates individuality, properly speaking. There no longer
exist the incomparability and indissolubility of the single exis-
tence, but only the general law. Any phenomenon, be it an indi-
vidual or a nebula in the Milky Way, is merely one of its instances.
In spite of the utter unrepeatability of its form, the individual
is a mere crosspoint and a resolvable pattern of fundamentally
general laws. This, at least, was the understanding of “nature"
of the time — only poets understood it differently. For this reason,
man in general, man as such, is the central interest of the period;
not historically given, particular, differentiated man. Concrete
man is reduced to general man: he is the essence of each indi-
vidual person, just as the universal laws of matter in general are
embodied in any fragment of matter, however specifically it be
formed. This argument gives one the right to see freedom and

68 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

equality together from the beginning. For, the general-human
man, the natural-law man, exists as the essential core in each
empirical man, who is individualized by virtue of particular
qualities, social position, and contingencies. Therefore, all that
is needed to make appear what is common to all men, or man’s
essence, or man as such, is to free the individual from all these
historical influences and distortions which merely hide his deep-
est nature.

Thus, the crucial point of this conception of individuality —
which is one of the great conceptions of intellectual history — is
this: if man is freed from all that he is not purely himself, if man
has found himself, there emerges as the proper substance of his
being, man-as-such or humanity. This humanity lives in all indi-
viduals. It is their constant, fundamental nature which only
empirically and historically is disguised, made smaller, distorted.
Freedom is the expression without restrictions or residues and in
all domains of existence, of this essence of man, of this central
ego, of this unconditioned self, which alone reigns over man’s
existence. In terms of the pure concept of mankind, all men are
essentially alike. Compared with this general element, all differ-
entiated individuality is something external and accidental. It is
the significance of this general element that makes the literature
of the revolutionary period continuously speak of the '‘people,”
the “tyrant,” “freedom” in general. It is for this reason that
the “natural religion” contains providence “as such,” justice “as
such,” divine education “as such,” but does not recognize the
right of any specific elaborations or manifestations of these ideas.
It is for this reason that “natural law” is based on the fiction of
isolated and similar individuals. Commonness in the sense of
collective unity has disappeared — ^whether this unity be economic
or of the church or of the estate or of the state itself. (The only
function of which the state has not been deprived is the negative
function of protection, of the prevention of disturbances.) Only
the free, self-contained individual is left. Historical-social units
have yielded to the conviction of the generality of human nature,
which subsists as the essential, inalienable, and always traceable
characteristic of each individual, and which must only be found
and pointed out in him to make him perfect. This generality of
human nature attenuates and makes bearable the isolation of

The Eighteenth Century 69

the individual. At the same time, it makes freedom possible as
an ethical concept, for it appears to eradicate the very develop-
ment of inequality (which nevertheless is the inevitable conse-
quence of freedom). In this sense it was possible for Frederick
the Great to speak of the prince as ‘‘the first judge, the first finan-
cier, the first minister of society,** but in the same breath, as “a
man like the least among his subjects.** Thus, eighteenth-century
individualism made the sociological antinomy between freedom
and inequality, with which I began my discussion, into an ethical
paradox, too: the antinomy was conceived as the innermost spring
of man’s nature, and yet as imposing the renunciation of the
self. And it also makes it into a religious paradox that is expressed
in the axiom, “He who loses his soul shall find it.**

[d] INDIVIDUALISM IN KANT

It is in the philosophy of Kant that this conception of indi-
viduality attains its highest intellectual sublimation. All cogni-
tion, Kant taught, results from the fact that the intrinsically
heterogeneous variety of sense impressions is formed into units.
This unification is possible because the mind, in which it occurs,
itself is a unit, an ego. The fact that instead of fleeting sensations
we have a consciousness of objects is the expression of the unifi-
cation which the ego brings about in these sensations. The object
is the counterpart of the subject. Thus the ego — not the acci-
dental, psychological, individual ego, but the fundamental, crea-
tive, unchangeable ego — becomes the vehicle and producer of
objectivity. Cognition is objectively true and necessary in the
measure in which it is formed by this pure ego, the ultimate legis-
lator of the cognizing mind. From this unshakable assumption of
one truth, of one objective world, it follows that in all men the
ego which forms or could form this world, must always be identi-
cal. Kantian idealism thus makes the knowable world the product
of the ego. At the same time, it insists on the oneness and per-
petual identity of true cognition. This idealism is the expression
of an individualism which sees in all that is human an uncondi-
tionally identical core. It is forced to hold that, just as the cog-
nized world is the same for all men, so the deepest productive
element in all men is homogeneous, even if it is not always equally
developed or manifest.

70 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

Thus, for Kant, the identity of the egos results in the identity
of their worlds. It is in this notion that he also discovers the root
of freedom. The world can be given only as the representation of
the idealistic ego, which embodies the absolute independence
of the person from all extrinsic conditions and determinations.
Inasmuch as the ego creates all conscious contents of existence —
and among them, the empirical ego itself — it cannot in turn
be created by any of them. In Kantian philosophy, the ego has
wrested its absolute sovereignty from all possible entanglements
with nature. Thou, society. It stands so much on itself alone that
even its world, the world, can stand on it. It is no use for the
powers of history to interfere with this ego since there is nothing
above or even beside it: by definition, it can go no other road
than that prescribed to it by its own nature. Kant and his epoch
make abstract man, the individuality that is freed from all ties
and specificities and is therefore always identical, the ultimate
substance of personality and, thereby, the ultimate value of per-
sonality. However unholy man may be, Kant says, humanity in
him is holy. And Schiller: ‘‘The idealist thinks so highly of man-
kind that he runs the risk of despising single men.’*

[e] THE DUAL ROLE OF “ NATURE*’

Even for Rousseau, who certainly was sensitive to individual
differences, these differences, nevertheless, are superficial. He
argues that the more completely man returns to his own heart
and grasps his inner absoluteness instead of mere external rela-
tions, the more forcefully flows in him, that is, in each individual
equally, the fountain of goodness and happiness. When man thus
really is himself, he possesses a sustained strength that is abundant
for more than his own maintenance. He can make it flow over
to others, as it were; it is sufficient to absorb others in himself and
to identify himself with them. We are ethically the more valuable,
charitable, and good, the more each of us is purely himself; the
more, that is, one allows that innermost core to become sovereign
in himself in which all men are identical in spite of all social
ties and accidental guises. Inasmuch as he is more than sheer
empirical individuality, the true individual has in this “more”
the possibility to give of himself and thus to overcome his empiri-
cal egoism.

The Eighteenth Century 71

We realize how the peculiar eighteenth-century conception of
nature establishes a close relation to ethics; and in all of the
eighteenth century, the double role of nature finds its strongest
expression in Rousseau. I already called attention to the signi-
ficance of nature for the problem of individuality: nature not
only is what really alone exists — the substance of all historical
oscillations and shifts — but also, at the same time, it is what
ought to be, the ideal with whose growing realization all men
must be concerned. To say that what truly exists is, at the same
time, an aim that must yet be reached, sounds contradictory. Yet
actually, these two propositions are the two sides of a consistent
psychological position which is taken in regard to more than
one value complex. We can simply not express it otherwise than
in this logically contradictory dualism. And it is precisely in its
specific stand on the problem of the ego that the dual significance
of the “natural” becomes most readily plausible. We feel in our-
selves an ultimate reality which forms the essence of our nature,
but which is yet only very imperfectly represented by our empiri-
cal reality. But it is by no means merely a fantasy-like ideal which
hovers above this empirical reality; for, in some shape it already
exists, traced in ideal lines, as it were, into our existence; and
yet it contains the norm for this existence, and only requires to
be fully worked out and elaborated in the material of our exis-
tence. That the ego which we already are, nevertheless is some-
thing yet to be achieved because we are it not yet purely and ab-
solutely but only in the disguise and distortion of our historical-
social destinies — this argument became an extremely powerful
feeling in the eighteenth century. The ego’s setting-of-norms for
the ego is ethically justified because the ideal ego is real in a
higher sense of the word: it is the generally human ego. When
it is attained, the true equality of all that is man is also attained.
This thought was expressed most exhaustively by Schiller: “Every
individual man carries a pure and ideal man in himself, as disposi-
tion and destination. It is the great task of his life, in all his
changes, to coincide with the unchangeable unity of this ideal
man. This pure man makes himself manifest, more or less dis-
tinctly, in every individual.”

72 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

[f] KANT^S “categorical IMPERATIVE*’: INDIVIDUALITY AS THE
SYNTHESIS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY

The formula of the “categorical imperative,” in which Kant
epitomized man’s moral task, is the most profound elaboration
of this concept of individuality. It bases man’s whole moral value
upon freedom. As long as we are mere parts of the mechanism
of the world, including the social world, we have as little “value”
as the passing cloud or the withering stone. Only when we cease
being a mere product and crosspoint of external forces and be-
come a being that develops out of his own ego, can we be respon-
sible. Only then can we acquire the possibility of both guilt and
moral value. Within the natural-social cosmos, “being-for-one-
self” or “personality” do not exist. Only when we are rooted
in absolute freedom (the metaphysical counterpart of laissez-
faire) do we gain both personality and the dignity of the moral.
And what this morality is, is expressed by the categorical impera-
tive as follows: “Act in such a way that the principle governing
your will could at the same time be valid as the principle of a
general legislation.” With the categorical imperative, the ideal
of equality has become the meaning of every Ought. Self-flatter-
ing arrogance has been made impossible: the individual can no
longer feel himself entitled to indulge in special actions and en-
joyments because he fancies that he is “different from the others.”
Moral trial “without regard to person,” equality before the
moral law, is perfected in the requirement that it must be pos-
sible to think consistently of one’s own action as of every-
body’s necessary manner of acting. Equality supplies freedom,
which is the mainspring of all ethics, with its content. The ab-
solutely self-dependent and self-responsible personality is pre-
cisely the personality whose action is ethically justified by the
identical claim to this action on the part of all others. Not merely,
only the man who is free is moral, but also, only the man who is
moral is free, because only his action possesses the character of
the general law that is real exclusively in the uninfluenced and
self-based ego. Thus, the eighteenth-century conception of indi-
viduality, with its emphasis on personal freedom that does not
exclude, but includes, equality, because the “true person” is

The Nineteenth Century 73

the same in every accidental man, has found its abstract perfec-
tion in Kant.

§5. The Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century, this conception splits up into two
ideals. Crudely and without regard for many necessary qualifica-
tions, these ideals may be identified as the tendencies toward
equality without freedom, and toward freedom without equality.

[a] SOCIALISM

The former is characteristic of socialism. Although it does
not, of course, exhaustively define socialism, it is yet more pro-
foundly a part of it than is admitted by the majority of its ad-
herents. In energetically rejecting mechanical equalization, the
socialists are mistaken about the central role that the idea of
equality will always play in the formation of socialist ideals.
Socialization of the means of production may, as I have already
stressed, bring out many individual differences which in the
present social system are atrophied because of their disappear-
ance into class levels, and because of imperfect education, over-
work, indigence, and worry. Nevertheless, the elimination of
undeserved advantages and disadvantages due to birth, fluctua-
tion of the stock market, accumulation of capital, differential
evaluation of identical quantities of work, etc., would certainly
lead to a very considerable leveling of economic conditions as
compared with the present state of affairs. And according to the
close dependence which precisely in socialist theory exists be-
tween the economic and the general cultural situation, the rela-
tive economic equilibration is bound to be paralleled by a com-
prehensive personal equilibration. Yet the crucial point is that
the various measures of leveling (which differ with different so-
cialist programs) only concern the oscillations in the theory of
the ideal of equality — an ideal which is one of the great character
traits of human nature. There will always be a type of person
whose notions regarding social values are contained in the idea
of the equality of all, however nebulous and unthinkable in the
concrete this idea may be. And there will also be a type to whom
individual differences and distances constitute an ultimate, ir-

74 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

reducible, and self-justified value of the social form of existence.
One of the leading socialists asserts that all socialist measures,
including those which superficially strike one as coercive, actually
aim at the development and security of the free personality.
Thus, the institution of maximum hours of work is merely a
prohibition to give up personal freedom for more than a particu-
lar number of hours. It is thus basically the same as the prohibi-
tion to sell oneself permanently into personal servitude. But this
sort of argument shows our particular socialist to think in terms
of eighteenth-century individualism with its schematic concep-
tion of freedom.

Perhaps no empirical man is guided exclusively by any one
of these two tendencies, freedom and equality. Perhaps, too, the
exclusive realization of either of them is entirely impossible. Yet
this does not prevent them from socially manifesting themselves
as fundamental types of character differences. Once one of them
exists, the individual who is dominated by it, will not be swayed
by rational argument. For in spite of any retrospective rationaliza-
tions to the contrary, such a tendency does not originate in its
appraisal as a means for the attainment of an ultimate end, such
as general happiness or personal perfection or the rationalization
of life. It rather itself is the ultimate ground on which all inten-
tions, decisions, and deductions are built. It expresses the exis-
tence of man, the substance of his essence. His relation to his
fellowmen is something very important, grave, and basic to him.
Hence his decision as to whether he is, or wants, or ought to be,
like or unlike them (individually, as well as in principle) is
bound to come from the very depth of his being. It seems to me
that socialism recruits most of its adherents, at any rate its most
fanatic adherents, from individuals who tend in the manner sug-
gested toward this quite general ideal of equality.

The relation between the relative equality of a socialized
system, and freedom is very complex. It is characterized by the
typical ambiguity which class differentiation commonly inflicts
upon general influences or modifications that concern the whole
of a given society. For, since the development and the life condi-
tions of the various parts of a society are extremely different, any
general modification must result in extremely different, even
diametrically opposed consequences for these various parts. The

The Nineteenth Century 75

same measure of general equalization that would give a great
deal of freedom to the laborer who is constantly exposed to the
threat of hunger and the hardships of wage work, would entail
at least an equal limitation of freedom for the entrepreneur, the
rentier^ the artist, the scholar, and other leaders of the present
order. A formally corresponding sociological ambiguity charac-
terizes the woman question. The freedom to engage in economic
production is sought after by the women of the higher classes
in an effort to secure their solid independence and a satisfactory
demonstration of their ability. Yet, for the woman factory worker,
this same freedom constitutes a terrible obstacle to the fulfill-
ment of her duties and to her happiness as wife and mother. As it
hits two different classes, the elimination of domestic and family
restrictions results in totally different values. To recapitulate,
in the socialist movement, the synthesis of freedom and equality
has been modified by the emphasis upon equality. And only
because the class, whose interests are represented by socialism,
would feel equality as freedom (at least during the initial period
of socialist equalization), can socialism overlook the antagonism
between the two ideals.

One might suggest that the loss of freedom which socialism
would impose on certain layers of the society, will be only transi-
tional, will last only as long as the aftereffects of present condi-
tions still allow for sensitivity to individual differences. In fact,
in view of the difficulties of reconciling freedom and equality,
touched upon above, socialism has been forced to resort to an ad-
justment to equality which, as an overall satisfaction, is supposed
to reduce the desires for freedom that go beyond it. Yet this resort
to such a panacea of adjustment is a questionable device, if only
because it can be used with equal readiness by any contrary posi-
tion. For, one could assert no less plausibly that the drives toward
freedom which are based on social differences could adjust to any
degree of reduction in the absolute quantity of these differences.
But the fact is that the nature of our sensitivity depends on
differences in stimulus. Therefore, after a brief period of adjust-
ment, the individual differences would base their utterly inevi-
table passions of greed and envy, of domination and feeling of
oppression, on the slight differences in social position that have
remained because they cannot be removed in even the most

76 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

socialized situation. By virtue of this psychological structure of
man, the exercise of freedom at the expense of others would find
a fertile field of expansion, even if the extreme degree of equality
attainable were actually attained.

One might, however, understand equality only in the sense
of equal justice. One might hold, that is, that the social institu-
tions should give each individual a certain quantity of freedom,
not on the basis of some mechanical and constant criterion, but
in exact proportion to his qualitative importance. Yet even this
conception could not be acted upon in practice. The reason is
a largely neglected fact which, nevertheless, is of the greatest
significance for an understanding of the relation between indi-
vidual and society. Any social order requires a hierarchy of super-
ordinations and subordinations, even if only for technical rea-
sons. Therefore, equality in the sense of justice can only be the
exact correspondence of personal qualification with position in
this hierarchy. Yet, this harmonious correspondence is in prin-
ciple impossible for the very simple reason that there always are
more persons qualified for superior positions than there are
superior positions. Among the million subjects of a prince, there
surely is a large number who would make equally good or better
princes. A good many factory workers could as well be entre-
preneurs or at least foremen. A large portion of the common
soldiers have full officer qualifications, even if only latently.
Here lies the observational truth of the proverb, “If God gives
somebody an office, he also gives him the mind necessary for it.** ^
Many people presumably have the qualifications required for the
filling of higher positions, but they demonstrate, develop, and
make them manifest only once they occupy these positions. Let
us only remember the often grotesque accidents by which men in
all spheres attain their positions. Is it not an incomprehensible
miracle that there should not be an incomparably greater amount
of incompetence than there actually is? No — precisely because
we must assume that competence is actually very widely diffused.

This incommensurability between the quantity of superior
competence and its possible use can perhaps be explained on the
basis of the difference (discussed earlier) between the character
of man as group member and as individual. The group as such

7 *‘Wem Gott ein Amt gibt, dem gibt er auch den Verstand dazu.'* — Tr.

The Nineteenth Century 77

is on a low level and is in need of leadership because its mem-
bers generally contribute to it only those aspects of their per-
sonalities that are common to all. These aspects always are the
coarser, more primitive, and more ‘‘subordinate** aspects. Hence,
whenever men associate in groups, it serves the purpose of the
group to organize in the form of subordination to a few. But this
does not prevent any single member from individually possess-
ing higher and finer qualities. But these are, precisely, individual
qualities. They diverge in different directions, all of them irrele-
vant to any common group possession. They do not therefore
raise the low level of the qualities in which all securely meet. It
follows that the group as a whole needs a leader — that there are
bound to be many subordinates and only few superordinates. It
further follows that each individual group member is more highly
qualified or more often capable of occupying a leading position
than he is able to make use of in his capacity as a group member.
The axiom, “Many are called but few are chosen,** also applies
to social structures. The antinomy is met by a priori limiting the
number of persons who are considered “qualified** to occupy
leading positions. Both the principle of estates and the contem-
porary social order implement this limitation by building classes
one on top of the other in the form of a pyramid which contains
increasingly fewer members as it approaches its top. The equal
right of all to occupy all positions obviously makes it impossible
to satisfy any justified claim whatever. Therefore, an estate or
class arrangement of the social order intrinsically exerts a limit-
ing selection. This selection is far from being determined by
considering the individuals but on the contrary, shapes them.

It is questionable whether a socialist order could eventually do
without such a priori super-subordination. Socialism postulates
that any accidental chance be eliminated from the determination
of positions to be occupied, and that individual qualification
alone decide the attainment of positions. On the other hand, it
also postulates that any talent develop “freely,** that is, that it
find the position commensurate with it. From this and from what
has been pointed out before, it follows that in socialism there
would be more superordinates than subordinates, more persons
who command than execute commands. If freedom in the social
sense refers to the adequate expression of any measure of indi-

78 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

vidual strength and importance in the configuration of leading
and following within the group, then freedom is here excluded
from the start. We have seen that the conflict between man’s
individual wholeness and his nature as a group member, makes
the harmonious proportion between personal qualification and
social position impossible; and thus makes impossible the syn-
thesis, on the basis of justice, between freedom and equality.
And this conflict cannot be eliminted even by a socialist order,
because it may be called a logical presupposition of society itself.

[b] THE NEW individualism: the incomparability of the

INDIVIDUAL

I must limit myself to presenting these fragments in the field
of the much-discussed relation of socialism to individual free-
dom. I shall now sketch the peculiar form of individualism that
dissolved the eighteenth-century synthesis which based equality
upon freedom, and freedom upon equality. In place of the
equality which (it will be recalled) expressed the deepest nature
of man and which, at the same time, had yet to be realized, it puts
inequality. Just as equality in the eighteenth century, so now
inequality in the nineteenth, only needs freedom to emerge from
its mere latency and potentiality and to dominate all of human
life. Freedom remains the general denominator even if its cor-
relate is the opposite of what it had been. It seems that, as soon
as the ego had become sufficiently strengthened by the feeling of
equality and generality, it fell back into the s^'^rch for inequality.
Yet this new inequality was posited from within. First, there had
been the thorough liberation ot the individual from the rusty
chains of guild, birth ight, and church. Now, the individual that
had thus become independent also wished to distinguish himself
from other individuals. The inx^^rtant point no longer was the
fact that he was a free individual as such, but that he was this
specific, iiicplace:iblc, given individual.

In this development, the modem tendency toward differen-
tiation attains an intensification that leads it away from the form
it had just reached in the preceding century. But in stressing this
contrast, one must not overlook the fact that the fundamental
direction, which actually pervades all of the modern period,
remains identical. This direction may be expressed by stating

rhe Nineteenth Century 79

that the indiviuui.’ seeks his self as if he did not yet have it, and
yet, at the same time, is certain that his only fixed point is this
self. In the light of the unbelievable expansion of theoretical
and practical horizons, it is ’understandable that the individual
should ever more urgently ^uch a fixed point, but that he
should be no longer capable of it in anything external

to himself. The double need tor unquestionable clarity and for
enigmatic unfathomableness — a. need whose two components
have been diverging ever further in the course of the develop-
ment of modem man — is satisfied, as if it were one homogeneous
need, in the idea jf the ego and in the feeling of personality. Yet
even socialism reccl/^s, pi>ychological help from both a concep-
tually demonstrated rationalism and from very obscure, possibly
atavistic-communistic instincts. Thus, in the end, all relations
to others are merely stations on the road on which the ego arrives
at itself. His relations may be such stations in two respects. Either
the ego may ultimately come to feel that it is like the others be-
cause, living as it does on nothing but its own forces, it may still
need this encouraging and supporting consciousness. Or, on the
contrary, it may be strong enough to bear the loneliness of its
own quality, and may hold that the only reason for a multitude
of individuals to exist at all is the possibility of each component
individual to measure his own incomparability and the indivi-
duality of his own world by those of the others.

Historically, then, the tendency toward individualization, as
I have already suggested, leads from one ideal to a very different
ideal. The first is the ideal of fundamentally equal, even if wholly
free and self-responsible personalities. The other is that of the
individuality which, precisely in its innermost nature, is incom-
parable and which is called upon to play an irreplaceable role.
Intimations of the later ideal are already found in the eighteenth
century, in Lessing, Herder, and Lavater. Lavater’s Christ cult
has been ascribed to his desire to individualize even God, and the
intensification of this cult, to his quest for ever new images of
Christ. Yet it is in a work of art that this form of individualism
finds its first full elaboration — in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.
Wilhelm Meistefs Apprenticeship, for the first time, shows a
world which is based exclusively on the individual peculiarities
of its protagonists and which is organized and developed only on

80 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

this basis, quite irres’iective of the fact that these protagonists
are designed as types. For, however often they may be repeated
in reality, it stiil is the essential significance of each of them that,
in his ultimate ground, he >? r1ifFprf>nt from the other with whom
fate has thrown him together. The accent of life and develop-
ment does not lie on similarity but on absolute peculiarity. In
Wilhelm Meistefs T ravels, the interest shifts from the individual
to mankind — not in the sense of eighteenth-century abstract
man-in-general, but of rollpctive. of the roncr'’*-" totality of
the living species. It is most remarkable to note how this indi-
vidualism with its emphasis on individual incomparability and
uniqueness, comes to the fore even on the basis of this interest
in mankind. The individualistic requirement of specificity does
not make for the valuation of total personality within society,
but for the personality’s obiective achievement for the benefit
of society. “Your general culture and all its institutions,” Goethe
says in the T ravels, “are fooleries. Any man’s task is to do some-
thing extraordinarily well, as no other man in his immediate
environment can.” This is the absolute opposite of the ideal of
free and equal personalities that Fichte had compressed into this
one sentence: “A rational being must simply be an individual —
but precisely, not this or that particular individual.” The older
ideal had resulted in the imperative that the individual differen-
tially characterized ego develop itself, through the moral process,
into the pure, absolute ego, which was the philosophical crystal-
ization of eighteenth-centui / “general man.” In pointed an-
tithesis to this position, Frederick Schlegel formulated the new
individualism thus: “It is precisely individuality that is the orig-
inal and eternal aspect of man; personality is less important.
To see one’s noblest calling in the cultivation and development
of this individuality would be divine egoism.”

The new individualism found its philosophical expression
in Schleiermacher. For Schleiermacher, the moral task consists
in each individual’s specific representation of mankind. Each
individual is a “compendium” of mankind; what is more, he is
a synthesis of the forces that constitute the universe. Yet out of
this material that is common to all, each individual creates an
entirely unique form. And here, too, as in the earlier conception
of individualism, reality also is the blueprint of what ought to be.

The Nineteenth Century 81

Not only as something already existing is man incomparable,
placed into a framework which can be filled out only by him.
There also is another aspect: the realization of this incompara-
bility, the filling-out of this framework, is man’s moral task. Each
individual is called or destined to realize his own, incomparable
image. The great world-historical idea that not only the equality
of men but also their differentiation represents a challenge,
becomes the core of a new world view in Schleiermacher. The
idea that the absolute only lives in the form of the individual,
and that individuality is not a restriction of the infinite but its
expression and mirror, makes the principle of the social division
of labor part of the metaphysical ground of reality itself. To be
sure, a differentiation that thus penetrates the last depths of the
individual nature, easily exhibits a mystical-fatalistic character.
(“This is the way thou hast to be; thou canst not escape thyself.
Sibyls and prophets have always said this,'') For this reason, it
remained foreign to the bright rationalism of the Enlightenment
and, on the other hand, recommended itself to Romanticism,
with which Schleiermacher was very closely connected.

The new individualism might be called qualitative, in con-
trast with the quantitative individualism of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Or it might be labeled the individualism of uniqueness
[Einzigkeit] as against that of singleness [Einzelheit], At any rate.
Romanticism perhaps was the broadest channel through which
it reached the consciousness of the nineteenth century. Goethe
had created its artistic, and Schleiermacher its metaphysical basis:
Romanticism supplied its sentimental, experiential foundation.
After Herder (in whom therefore one of the mainsprings of
qualitative individualism must be sought), the Romanticists
were the first to absorb and to emphasize the particularity and
uniqueness of historical realities. They deeply felt the important
claim and the fascinating beauty of the Middle Ages, which had
been neglected, and of the Orient, which had been despised by
the activistic culture of a liberal Europe. In this sense, Novalis
wanted his “one spirit” to transform itself into infinitely many
alien spirits; the “one spirit inheres, as it were, in all objects
it contemplates, and it feels the infinite, simultaneous sensations
of a harmonious plurality.” Above all, the Romanticists experi-
enced the inner rhythm of the incomparability, of the specific

82 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

claim, of the sharp qualitative differentiation of the single ele-
ment, which the new individualism also sees in the social element,
among the components of society. Here, too, Lavater is an inter-
esting predecessor. Occasionally, his physiognomy so stubbornly
pursues the special characteristics of man's visible and inner
traits that he cannot find his way back to man's total individuality,
but remains arrested in his interest in the completely individual
and single. The Romantic mind, too, feels its way through an
endless series of contrasts. At the instant it is being lived and
experienced, each of them appears as something absolute, com-
pleted, self-contained, but at the next moment it is left behind.
The Romanticist enjoys the very essence of each of these con-
trasts only in its difference from every other. “He who is glued
to only one point,'' Frederick Schlegel says, “is nothing but a
rational oyster." In the protean succession of its contrasts of
mood and task and conviction and sentiment, the life of the
Romanticist reflects the social scene in which each individual
finds the sense of his existence — individual no less than social —
only in contrast with others, in the personal uniqueness of his
nature and his activities.

In its purely societal version, this conception of the task of
the individual evidently points toward the constitution of a more
comprehensive whole that is composed of the differentiated
elements. The more specific the achievements (but also the needs)
of the individuals, the more urgent becomes their reciprocal
supplementation. In the same measure, the total organism which
has grown out of the individuals engaged in the division of labor
and which includes and mediates their interrelated effects and
countereffects, shifts, so to speak, into a location high above them.
The specificity of the individual thus requires a powerful politi-
cal constitution which allocates his place to him, but in this
fashion also becomes his master. It is for this reason that this
individualism, which restricts freedom to a purely inward sense
of the term, easily acquires an anti-liberal tendency. It thus
is the complete antithesis of eighteenth-century individualism
which, in full consistency with its notion of atomized and basic-
ally undifferentiated individuals, could not even conceive the
idea of a collective as an organism that unifies heterogeneous
elements. The eighteenth-century collective holds its elements

The Nineteenth Century 83

together exclusively by means of the law that is above all of them.
The function of this law is to restrict the freedom of the indi-
vidual to the point where this freedom can coexist with that of
every other individual. The godfathers of this law were, on the
one hand, the laws of a mechanically construed nature and, on
the other, law in the Roman-legal sense. By virtue of these two
origins, the social scene in its concreteness entirely escapes eight-
eenth-century individualism. For, the social scene cannot be put
together through the mere addition of isolated and equal indi-
viduals. It only arises from individual interactions within a divi-
sion of labor. And it rises above these interactions as a unit
which cannot be found in the individual, not even as some sort
of proportionate quantity.

In terms of intellectual history, the doctrine of freedom and
equality is the foundation of free competition; while the doc-
trine of differentiated personality is the basis of the division
of labor. Eighteenth-century liberalism put the individual on
his own feet: in the nineteenth, he was allowed to go as far as
they would carry him. According to the new theory, the natural
order of things saw to it that the unlimited competition of all
resulted in the harmony of all interests, that the unrestricted
striving after individual advantages resulted in the optimum
welfare of the whole. This is the metaphysics with which the
nature-optimism of the eighteenth century socially justified free
competition. The metaphysical foundation of the division of
labor was discovered with the individualism of difference, with
the deepening of individuality to the point of the individual's
incomparability, to which he is “called" both in his nature and
in his achievement. The two great principles which operate, in-
separably, in nineteenth-century economic theory and practice —
competition and division of labor — thus appear to be the eco-
nomic projections of the philosophical aspects of social indi-
vidualism. Or inversely, these philosophical aspects appear to be
the sublimations of the concrete economic forms of production
of the period. Or, finally and more correctly, and thus suggesting
the very possibility of this mutual interdependence: they both
derive from one of the profound transformations of history which
we cannot know in their essential nature and motivation but

84 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

only in the manifestations they engender, as it were, when fusing
with particular, contentually determined spheres of life.

To be sure, unlimited competition and individual specializa-
tion through divison of labor have affected individual culture
in a way that shows them not to be its most suitable promoters.
Perhaps, however, beyond the economic form of cooperation
between the two great sociological themes, individual and society
(the only sociological themes that have thus far been realized),
there yet exists a higher form that might be the latent ideal of
our culture. I should prefer to believe, however, that the ideas
of free personality as such and of unique personality as such, are
not the last words of individualism. I should like to think that
the efforts of mankind will produce ever more numerous and
varied forms for the human personality to affirm itself and to
demonstrate the value of its existence. In fortunate periods,
these varied forms may order themselves into harmonious wholes.
In doing so, their contradictions and conflicts will cease to be
mere obstacles to mankind’s efforts: they will also stimulate new
demonstrations of the strength of these efforts and lead them
to new creations.

Fart Two

Quantitative Aspects
of the Group

Chapter 1

On the Significance
of Numbers for Social Life

THE PRESENT STUDIES BEGIN

by examining forms of social life, combinations and interactions
among individuals. But they do so in one respect only: the bear-
ing which the mere number of sociated individuals has upon
these forms of social life. It will immediately be conceded on
the basis of everyday experiences, that a group upon reaching
a certain size must develop forms and organs which serve its
maintenance and promotion, but which a smaller group does
not need. On the other hand, it will also be admitted that smaller
groups have qualities, including types of interaction among their
members, which inevitably disappear when the groups grow
larger. This quantitative determination of the group, as it may
be called, has a twofold function. Negatively speaking, certain
developments, which are necessary or at least possible as far as
the contents or conditions of life are concerned, can be realized
only below or above a particular number of elements. Positively,
certain other developments are imposed upon the group by cer-
tain purely quantitative modifications. Yet not even these de-
velopments emerge automatically, for they also depend on other
than numerical characteristics. The decisive point, however, is
that they are not the result of these characteristics alone, for they
emerge only under certain numerical conditions.

§ 1 . Small Groups

[a] SOCIALISM

It can be shown, for instance, that, up to this day at least,
socialistic or nearly socialistic societies have been possible only in

88 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

very small groups and have always failed in larger ones. The prin-
ciple of socialism — ^justice in the distribution of production and
reward — can easily be realized in a small group and, what is surely
quite as important, can be safeguarded there by its members.
The contribution of each to the whole and the group's reward
to him are visible at close range; comparison and compensation
are easy. In the large group they are difficult, especially because
of the inevitable differentation of its members, of their functions,
and claims. A very large number of people can constitute a unit
only if there is a complex division of labor. The reason is not
only the obvious one of economic technique; there also is the
fact that only the division of labor produces the sort of interpene-
tration and interdependence which (through innumerable inter-
mediaries) connects each with everybody, and without which a
far-flung group would break apart on every occasion. Therefore,
the closer the group unity that is desired, the more articulate
must be the specialization of its members, and the more uncon-
ditionally must this specialization bind the individual to the
whole and the whole to him. The socialism of a large group thus
would require the sharpest differentiation among the component
personalities, and this differentiation would necessarily have to
extend beyond their occupations, and include their feelings and
wishes as well; But this would make comparisons among indi-
vidual achievements and among individual rewards, and adjust-
ments between them, extremely difficult. And yet it is on them
that rests the possibility of approximate socialism in small, and
therefore undifferentiated, groups.

In an advanced civilization, these groups are limited to
numerical insignificance even logically, as it were, by their de-
pendence on goods which they cannot supply under their own
conditions of production. To my knowledge, there is only a single
approximately socialistic organization ^ in existence in Europe

1 The reliability of the historical materials used in these essays is conditioned,
as far as their content is concerned, by two circumstances. Because of the particular
function that these materials have here, they had to be culled from so many and
heterogenous areas of historico social life that the limited labor power of a single
person could in general only draw on secondary sources for their collection; they
could rarely be verified by direct firsthand investigation. On the other hand, the
fact that these materials were collected over a long period of years will make it
understandable that not every single item could be checked against the latest re-
search before the publication of the book. If the communication of social facts

Small Groups 89

today. It is the Familistere de Guise y a large factory of cast-iron
products. It was founded in 1880 by a disciple of Fourier on
the principle of complete welfare for each worker and his family,
of the guarantee of a minimum existence, of free care and educa-
tion for the children, and of the collective attainment of sub-
sistence. During the i8go’s, the enterprise employed approxi-
mately two thousand people and appeared to be viable. But
evidently it did or does so only because it is surrounded by a
society that lives under very different life conditions, out of
which the Familistere can fill the inevitable gaps of its own pro-
duction. For, human needs cannot be rationalized in the way
production can be. They seem to have a contingency or incalcu-
lability about them, which is the reason why their satisfaction
can be achieved only at the cost of producing innumerable irra-
tional and unusable goods. A group, therefore, which does not
carry on such a production and relies instead on a complete sys-
tematization and perfect rationality of its activities, will always
necessarily be a small group. For it can obtain only from a sur-
rounding larger group that which at an advanced stage of civiliza-
tion it needs for a satisfactory living standard.

[b] RELIGIOUS SECTS

•

There also are group formations of a religious sort, whose
sociological structure makes it impossible for them to support
a large membership. Such are, for instance, the sects of the Wal-
denses, Mennonites, and Hermhuter. Where dogma forbids
oath, military service, and occupancy of offices; where very per-

were one of the purposes of this volume, even though only secondary, the latitude
given to undemonstrated statements and errors that has just been implied would
be inadmissible. But in the present attempt at eliciting from social life the pos-
sibility of a new scientific abstraction, the essential aim can only be the achievement
of this abstraction by means of any examples whatever, and thus the proof that
it makes sense. If, for the sake of methodological clarification I should express the
matter in a somewhat exaggerated fashion, I would say that the only importance
of the examples is that they are possible, and less that they are real. For, their
truth is not (or only in a few cases) designed to demonstrate the truth of a general
proposition. Rather, even where some expression might not indicate it, they are
only the object of an analysis; and the object itself is irrelevant. It is the correct
and fruitful manner of performing this analysis, not the truth about the reality
of its object, which is either achieved here or not. The investigation could be
carried out even on the basis of fictitious examples, whose importance for the
interpretation of reality could be left to the reader’s accidental knowledge of fact.

90 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

sonal affairs, such as occupation, daily schedule, and even mar-
riage, are regulated by the community; where a specific dress
separates the faithful from the others and symbolizes their be-
longing together; where the subjective experience of immediate
rapport with Christ constitutes the real cohesion of the com-
munity — in such situations, extension to large groups would
evidently break the tie of solidarity which consists to a large
degree precisely in the position of being singled out of larger
groups and being in contrast with them. At least in this sociolog-
ical respect, the claim of these sects that they represent original
Christianity is not without justification. For, original Chris-
tianity, a yet undifferentiated unit of dogma and way of life, was
possible only in such small communities within surrounding
larger ones; and the larger groups not only served to supplement
their external needs but also to form a contrast by which the
sects became aware of their own specific nature. The diffusion
of Christianity to society at large was therefore bound to change
completely its sociological character, no less than its spiritual
content.

[c] ARISTOCRACIES

It is, furthermore, the very idea of aristocracies that they can
be only relatively small. This obvious fact, however, does not
merely follow from the dominance of aristocracy over the masses.
There also seems to be an absolute (though greatly varying)
limitation in number. In other words, there is not only a certain
proportion which would allow the ruling aristocracy to grow
indefinitely in some prorated fashion as the mass of the ruled
grows. There also is an absolute limit beyond which the aristo-
cratic form of the group can no longer be maintained. The point
at which it breaks down is determined in part by external, in
part by psychological circumstances. If it is to be effective as a
whole, the aristocratic group must be “surveyable’* by every
single member of it. Each element must still be personally ac-
quainted with every other. Relations by blood and marriage
must be ramified and traceable throughout the whole group.
Thus the tendency of extreme numerical limitation, characteris-
tic of historical aristocracies from Sparta to Venice, is not only

Small Groups 91

due to the egoistic disinclination to share a ruling position but
also to the instinct that the vital conditions o£ an aristocracy
can be maintained only if the number of its members is small,
relatively and absolutely. The unconditional right of primo-
geniture, which is of an aristocratic nature, is the means for
preventing expansion. Both the old Theban law against increase
in the number of landed estates and the Corinthian law requir-
ing constancy in the number of families, were based on it. It is
very characteristic that at one point, when Plato speaks of the
Ruling Few, he also directly designates them as the Not-Many.

Where an aristocracy yields to democratic and centrifugal
tendencies which usually accompany the transition to very large
communities, it becomes entangled in deadly conflicts with its
own life principle. A case in point is the nobility of Poland be-
fore the division. Under more favorable conditions, the conflict
is resolved by transformation into a pervasive democratic form.
The ancient free Germanic peasant community with the wholly
personal equality of its members, for instance, was thoroughly
aristocratic, but in its continuation in urban communities be-
came the fountainhead of democracy. If this solution is shunned,
there is nothing left but to draw at a certain point a hard line
against expansion, and to stem the quantitatively closed group
against whatever outside elements may want to enter it, no matter
how much they may be entitled to do so. The aristocratic nature
often becomes conscious of itself only in this situation, in this in-
creased solidarity in the face of the tendency to expand. Thus, the
old constitution of the gens seems to have been transformed
several times into a real aristocracy only because a new popula-
tion pressed upon it — a population alien and too numerous to be
absorbed even gradually. Confronted with this increase of the
total group, the associations of gentes, which in their whole
nature were quantitatively limited, could maintain themselves
only as aristocracies. In a very similar way, the protective guild
Richerzeche of Cologne originally consisted of all free burghers.
In the measure, however, in which the population of the city
increased, it became a closed aristocratic association.

Yet the tendency of political aristocracies not to become
‘‘many*' under any circumstances, usually leads to their decrease
and extinction, rather than to their continuation. The reason

92 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

is not only physiological. In general, small and very exclusive
groups also distinguish themselves from large ones by the fact
that the very fate that strengthens and renews the latter may
destroy the former. A lost war can ruin a small city-state, but
regenerate a large state. The explanation is not so simple as it
might seem: there is also the difference in the ratio of potential
to actual energies. Small, centripetally organized groups usually
call on and use all their energies, while in large groups, forces
remain much oftener potential, absolutely as well as relatively.
The need of the collectivity here does not claim continuously
the total personality of every member but can afford not to ex-
ploit some of the energies, which in an emergency may be drawn
upon and actualized. Therefore, where circumstances exclude
dangers that require an unused quantity of social energy, certain
measures of numerical limitation, even beyond endogamy, may
be highly appropriate. The polyandry of the Tibetan mountains
is socially beneficial, as even the missionaries recognize. For,
the soil is so infertile that a rapid population increase would
result in the direst need; and polyandry is an excellent pre-
ventive against this. We hear that the members of Bushman
families occasionally have to separate because of the sterility of
the soil; in view of this, the rule which limits family size to a
level compatible with subsistence opportunities, appears entirely
in line with the very interest of family unity and all its social
significance, while the external life conditions of the group, and
their consequences for the internal group structure, obviate the
dangers that otherwise inhere in numerical limitation.

Where the small group, especially the political group, to a
great extent preempts the personalities of its members, the very
character of its unity forces the members to take decisive stands
in regard to persons, objective tasks, and other groups. On the
other hand, the large group with its many different elements
requires such a stand much less, or cannot even afford it. The
histories of the Greek and Italian cities and of the Swiss cantons
show that small contiguous communities either federate or live
in a state of mutual, more or less latent hostility. Warfare and
its rules are much more bitter, and particularly much more
radical, between them than they are between great states: the
lack of group organs, reserves, and relatively undefined and

Large Groups: the Mass 93

transitional elements, makes modification and adaptation diffi-
cult. Thus their fundamental sociological structure, in conjunc-
tion with their external conditions, makes them face the question
of life or death much more often than larger societies.

§ 2. Large Groups: the Mass

Aside from these traits of small groups I will mention, with
the same inevitably arbitrary selection from among innumerable
features, the following which characterize the sociological struc-
ture of large groups. I begin by suggesting that large groups, in
comparison with smaller ones, seem to show less radicalism and
decisiveness. Yet this statement must be qualified. For, precisely
where large masses are activated by political, social, or religious
movements, they are ruthlessly radical, and extreme parties over-
whelm moderate ones. The reason is that large masses can always
be animated and guided only by simple ideas: what is common
to many must be accessible even to the lowest and most primitive
among them. Even nobler and more differentiated personalities
in relatively large numbers never meet on complex and highly
developed ideas and impulses but only on those that are relatively
simple and generally human. Yet the realities in which the ideas
of the mass are designed to function are always very complex
and made up of a large number of divergent elements. Simple
ideas, therefore, must always have the effect of being very one-
sided, ruthless, and radical.

This is even more true where the mass is in physical proximity.
Here innumerable suggestions swing back and forth, resulting
in an extraordinary nervous excitation which often overwhelms
the individuals, makes every impulse swell like an avalanche,
and subjects the mass to whichever among its members happens
to be the most passionate. The rule according to which the
voting of the Roman people took place in fixed groups {tributim
et centuriatim descriptis ordinibus, classibus, aetatibus [by urban
and recruiting districts, by estates, military classes, age groups],
etc.), has been interpreted as a means essential for keeping de-
mocracy under control — the Greek democracies voted in masses,
under the immediate impact of the orator. The fusion of masses
under one feeling, in which all specificity and reserve of the

94 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

personality are suspended, is fundamentally radical and hostile
to mediation and consideration. It would lead to nothing but
impasses and destructions if it did not usually end before in inner
exhaustions and repercussions that are the consequences of the
one-sided exaggeration. Furthermore, the masses, as the term is
used here, have little to lose but, on the contrary, believe that
they have everything to gain; most inhibitions of radicalism,
therefore, are usually suspended. Finally, groups, more fre-
quently than individuals, forget that their power has limits at
all. More precisely, they ignore these limits; and they do so the
more easily, the less known to one another are their members —
and mutual lack of knowledge is typical of a larger group that
has come together by accident.

§ 3 . Group Size, Radicalism, and Cohesiveness

This sort of radicalism is distinguished by its emotionality
and is indeed characteristic of large groups. But it is an excep-
tion, for in general, small parties are more radical than large
ones, whereby, of course, the ideas that form the basis of the
party itself put the limits on its radicalism. Radicalism here is
sociological in its very nature. It is necessitated by the unreserved
devotion of the individual to the rationale of the group, by the
sharp delimitation of the group against other nearby groups
(a sharpness of demarcation required by the need for the self-
preservation of the group), and by the impossibility of taking
care of widely varying tendencies and ideas within a narrow
social framework. Of all this, the radicalism of content is largely
independent.

It has been noted, for instance, that the conservative-
reactionary elements in present-day Germany are forced by their
very numerical strength to moderate their extreme aspirations.
These groups draw upon so many and heterogeneous social strata
that they cannot pursue any one of their tendencies to the end
without giving offense to some portion of their constituency.
In the same way, the Social-Democratic party has been forced by
the fact of its large membership to dilute its qualitative rad-
icalism, to give some room to deviations from its dogma, and to
allow certain compromises with its intransigence — if not ex-

Group Size, Radicalism, and Cohesiveness 95

pressly, at least here and there in its actions. It is the uncon-
ditional solidarity of elements on which the sociological possi-
bility of radicalism is based. This solidarity decreases in the
measure in which numerical increase involves the admission of
heterogeneous individual elements. For this reason, professional
coalitions of workers, whose purpose is the improvement of labor
conditions, know very well that they decrease in inner cohesion
as they increase in volume. In this case, on the other hand, the
numerical extension has the great significance of freeing the
coalition, through each additional member who joins it, of a
competitor who might otherwise have undersold it and thus have
threatened its existence.

For, evidently, there emerge very specific conditions for the
life of a group which develops within a larger one under the idea
that it includes all elements which fall under its assumptions —
of a group which thus realizes its very function. In these cases
the axiom applies, “Who is not for me is against me.” And the
person who ideally, as it were, belongs to the group but remains
outside it, by his mere indifference, his non-affiliation, positively
harms the group. This non-membership may take the form of
competition, as in the case of workers’ coalitions; or it may show
the outsider j;he limits of the power which the group yields; or
it may damage the group because it cannot even be constituted
unless all potential candidates join as members, as is the case in
certain industrial cartels. Where, therefore, a group is confronted
with the question of completeness (which by no means applies
to all groups), with the question, that is, whether all elements to
which the group’s principles apply actually are members of it,
there the consequences of this completeness must be carefully
distinguished from those of its size. To be sure, the complete
group is also larger. But what is important is not size as such but
the problem (which nevertheless depends upon size) whether this
size fills a prescribed framework. This problem can become so
important that (as in the case of workers’ coalitions) the disad-
vantages for cohesion and unity, which follow from mere nu-
merical increase, are directly antagonistic to the advantages of
nearing completeness.

96 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life
§ 4 . Paradoxes in Group Structure

More generally, the characteristics of the large group can,
to a considerable extent, be explained as surrogates for the per-
sonal and immediate cohesion typical of the small group. The
large group creates organs which channel and mediate the inter-
actions of its members and thus operate as the vehicles of a
societal unity which no longer results from the direct relations
among its elements. Offices and representations, laws and sym-
bols of group life, organizations and general social concepts are
organs of this sort. Their formations and functions are dealt with
in many passages of the present volume. At this point, therefore,
only their connection with the quantitative aspect of the group
needs discussion. Typically, all of them develop fully and purely
only in large groups. They are the abstract form of group cohe-
sion whose concrete form can no longer exist after the group
has reached a certain size. Their utility, which ramifies into a
thousand social characteristics, ultimately depends on numerical
premises. They are the embodiment of the group forces and thus
have a super-personal and objective character with which they
confront the individual. But this character springs from the very
multitude of the individual members and their effects, whatever
they may be. For, it is this large number which paralyzes the
individual element and which causes the general element to
emerge at such a distance from it that it seems as if it could exist
by itself, without any individuals, to whom in fact it often enough
is antagonistic.

Here we find a parallel in the phenomenon of the concept,
A concept isolates that which is common to singular and hetero-
geneous items. It stands the more highly above each of them, the
more of them it comprises. It is, therefore, the most general
concepts, that is, those which comprehend the largest number
of items — such as the abstractions of metaphysics — that gain, as
it were, a separate existence, the norms and developments of
which are often alien or even hostile to those of more tangible,
single items. In a similar manner, the large group gains its unity,
which finds expression in the group organs and in political no-
tions and in ideals, only at the price of a great distance between
all of these structures and the individual. In the social life of a

Numerical Aspects of Prominent Group Members 97

small group, by contrast, the individuars views and needs are
directly effective, are objects of immediate consideration. This
situation accounts for the frequent difficulties characteristic of
organizations which are composed of a number of smaller units.
Matters at issue here can be appraised correctly and treated with
interest and care only at close range; but, on the other hand, a
just and regular arrangement of all details can be secured only
from the distance which is reserved for the central organ alone.
Such a discrepancy is revealed again and again by charitable
organizations, labor unions, school administrations, etc. In all
these instances, it is hard to reconcile personal relations, which
are the very life principle of small groups, with the distance and
coolness of objective and abstract norms without which the large
group cannot exist.^

§ 5, Numerical Aspects of Prominent Group Members

The structural differences among groups, that are produced
by mere numerical differences, become even more evident in the
roles played by certain prominent and effective members. It is
obvious that a given number of such members has a different
significance in a large group than in a small one. As the group
changes quantitatively, the effectiveness of these members also
changes. But it must be noted that this effectiveness is modified
even if the number of outstanding members rises or falls in exact
proportion to that of the whole group. The role of one million-

2 Here emerges a typical difficulty of the human condition. Our theoretical and
practical attitudes toward all kinds of phenomena constantly causes us to stay,
simultaneously, within and without them. The person, for instance, who argues
against smoking must himself both smoke and not smoke: if he does not, he does not
know the attraction he condemns; but if he does, he is not considered entitled to
make a judgment which he belies. Another example: in order to have an opinion
about women “in general,” one must have known intimate relations with them and,
at the same time, be free and distant from such relations, because they would
change one’s judgment. Only where we are close, are on the inside, are equals, do
we know and understand; only where distance precludes immediate contacts in
every sense of the word do we have the objectivity and detachment which are as
necessary as knowledge and understanding. This dualism of nearness and distance
is necessary for our behavior to be consistently correct. It inheres, so to speak, in the
fundamental forms and problems of our life. Just so, the fact that the same affair
can be correctly treated only within a small group and only within a large one, is a
formal, sociological contradiction; it is merely a special case of this generally
human contradiction.

98 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

aire who lives in a city of ten thousand middle-class people, and
the general physiognomy which that city receives from his pres-
ence, are totally different from the significance which fifty mil-
lionaires or, rather, each of them, have for a city of 500,000
population — in spite of the fact that the numerical relation be-
tween the millionaire and his fellow citizens, which alone (it
would seem) should determine that significance, has remained
unchanged. If, in a parliamentary party of twenty, there are four
who criticize the political program or want to secede, their sig-
nificance in terms of party tendencies and procedures is different
from what it would be if the party were fifty strong and had ten
rebels within it: although the numerical ratio has not changed,
the importance of the ten in the larger party will in general be
greater. To give a final example: it has been noted that a military
tyranny (other things being equal) is the more tenable, the larger
the territory over which it extends. If its army includes one per
cent of the population, it is easier for an army of 100,000 to keep
a population of ten million under control than it is for a hundred
soldiers to hold a city of 100,000 in check, or for one soldier, a
village of a hundred. The strange thing is that the absolute
numbers of the total group and of its prominent elements so
remarkably determine the relations within the group — in spite
of the fact that their numerical ratio remains the same. These
examples can easily be multiplied. They show that the relation
of sociological elements depends not only on their relative but
also on their absolute quantities. Suppose we have a party within
a larger society. The relation between the two changes not only
when the society remains stationary while the party increases
or decreases in membership, but also when they both change in
the same sense and to the same extent. This fact reveals the
sociological significance of the magnitude or smallness of the
total group even for the numerical relations of its elements. And
yet, at a first glance, only these numerical relations seem to have
to do with the significance of numbers for the relations within
the group.

Custom, Law, Morality 99

§ 6 . Custom, Law, Morality

The formal difference in the individual’s group behavior,
as it is determined by the quantity of his group, is not only of
factual but also of normative and moral significance. This is
perhaps most clearly evident in the difference between custom
and law. Among Aryan peoples, the earliest ties of the individual
to a super-individual order of life seem to be rooted in a very
general instinct or concept of the normative, the decent, the
Ought in general. The Hindu dharma, the Greek themis, the
Latin fas, all express this undifferentiated “normative as such.”
The more special regulations, religious, moral, conventional,
legal, are still enfolded in it, are not yet ramified and separated
out: the general notion of the normative is their original unity,
not a unity abstracted from them in retrospect. In contrast with
the opinion according to which morality, custom, and law have
developed as supplementations out of this germinal state, it
seems to me that this germinal state is perpetuated in what we
call custom. And custom, I think, represents a stage of non-
differentiation that in different directions sends forth two forms,
law and morality.

Morality here concerns us only insofar as it results from the
behavior of the individual toward other individuals or groups,
that is, insofar as it has essentially the same contents as custom
and law. Morality develops in the individual through a second
subject that confronts him in himself. By means of the same split
through which the ego says to itself “I am” — confronting itself,
as a knowing subject, with itself as a known object — it also says
to itself “I ought to.” The relation of two subjects that appears
as an imperative is repeated within the individual himself by
virtue of the fundamental capacity of our mind to place itself in
contrast to itself, and to view and treat itself as if it were some-
body else. (I do not here answer the question whether this phe-
nomenon represents a transference of the empirically prior inter-
individual relation to the elements within the individual, or
whether it is a purely spontaneous process originating in these
elements.)

On the other hand we find this. Once the normative forms
have received particular contents, these contents are emanci-

100 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

pated from their original sociological vehicles, and attain an
inner and autonomous necessity that deserves the designation
of '‘ideal/' At this stage, these contents, which actually are be-
haviors or states of individuals, are in themselves valuable; they
ought to be. Their social nature or significance is no longer alone
in giving them their imperative character: at this stage, it rather
derives from their objectively ideal significance and value. It is
true that morality becomes personalized. It is furthermore true
that the three general norms of custom, law, and morality itself
develop into objective and super-social phenomena. But neither
fact prevents our emphasizing here that their contents are socially
purposeful, and that those three forms themselves make sure that
their contents are actually realized through the individual.

We deal here with forms of the intrinsic and extrinsic relation
of the individual to his social group. For, the same contents of
this relation has historically been clothed in different motiva-
tions or forms. What at one time or place was a custom, elsewhere
or later has been a law of the state or has been left to private
morality. What was under the coercion of law, has become mere
good custom. What was the matter of individual conscience, later
has often enough been legally enforced by the state, etc. The
poles of this continuum are law and morality, and between them
stands custom, out of which both have developed. In the legal
code and in the executive, law has specialized organs through
which its contents are precisely defined and externally enforced.
For this reason, law is best limited to the indispensable pre-
suppositions of group life: what the group can unconditionally
require of the individual is only what it must require uncon-
ditionally. By contrast, the free morality of the individual knows
no other law than that which he autonomously gives himself, and
no other executive power than his own conscience. In practice,
therefore, its jurisdiction has accidental and fluid borderlines
that change from case to case,® although in principle it extends
to the totality of action.

8 The fact that law and morality derive (as it were) together from one shift in
societal development, is reflected in their teleological functions which are more
closely interrelated than appears on first sight. When strict individual conduct,
which is characteristic of a life pervasively regulated by custom, yields to a general
legal norm with its much greater distance from ail individual matters, the freedom

Custom, Law, Morality 101

A gro up secures the suitable behavior of its members throug h
custori ir when legal coercion is not permissible and individu al
morality n ot reliable. Custom thus operates as a supplement of
tKese otner two ora^s, whereas at a time when these more dif-
ferentiated kinds of norms did not yet exist, or existed only in a
germinal form, it was the only regulation of life. This indicates
the sociological locus of custom . Custom lies between the larges t
^ou p, as a member of which the individual is rather subject to
law, and absolute individuali ty, which is the sole vehicle of free
morality. In other words, it belongs to smaller groups, inter-
mediate between these two extremes. In fact, almost all custom
is custom of estate or Its manifestations, as external be-

havior, fashion, or honor, always characterize only a section of
the society, while the whole of this society is dominated by the
same law.'* It is the smaller group, composed of those whom the
violation of good custom somehow concerns or who witness it,
which reacts to this violation, whereas a breach of the legal order
provokes the whole society. Since the only executive organs of
custom are public opinion and certain individual reactions di-

that the individual has thus gained must nevertheless, in the interest o£ society, not
be left to itself. Legal imperatives are supplemented by moral imperatives, and fill
the gaps that the disappearance of ubiquitous custom has left in the norms. In com-
parison with custom, moral and legal norms lie much higher above the individual
and, at the same time, much more deeply within him. For, whatever personal and
metaphysical values may be constituted by conscience and autonomous morality,
their social value, which alone is in question here, lies in their extraordinary
prophylactic efficiency. Law and custom seize the will externally and in its realiza-
tion; they anticipate and threaten; and, in order to be effective without fear, they
usually, though not always, must become part of personal morality. It is personal
morality which is at the root of action. It so transforms the innermost aspect of the
individual that he automatically does the right deed without the help of the
relatively external forces of law and custom. Yet society is not interested in his
purely moral perfection. Individual morality is important to society and is bred
by it only insofar as it guarantees as much as possible that the individual act in a
socially efficient manner. In individual morality, society creates an organ which is
not only more deeply effective than law and custom, but which also saves society
the expenditures and labors involved in these institutions. In its tendency to obtain
its prerequisites as cheaply as possible, society also makes use of “good conscience."
For through his conscience the individual rewards himself for his good deeds;
while if he had no conscience, society would probably have to guarantee him this
reward somehow by means of law or custom.

* Cf. the discussion of the sociological form of honor in the chapters on the self-
preservation of the group and on the intersection of groups. [Neither of these is
contained in the present volume.]

102 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

rectly related to public opinion, a large group itself cannot ad-
minister custom. The everyday experience in which business cus-
tom permits and enjoins other things than aristocratic custom, in
which the custom of a religious group involves other things than
that of a literary society, etc., suggests that the content of custo m
consists of the spec i fic conditions necessary for a particu largro^.
For in order to guarantee the^ conditions, the ^oup can use
neither the coercive power of the state law nor any reliable
autonomous morality of the individual.

The only aspect which these groups share with primitive
groups, with which social history begins for us, is numerical
smallness. Life forms that originally were sufficient for the to-
tality have come to characterize its subdivisions, as the totality
itself has increased. For it is these totalities which now contain
the possibilities of personal relation, the approximately equal
level among their members, and the common interests and ideals,
by virtue of which social regulations can be left to such pre-
carious and elastic a norm as custom. But when the members
increase in number and thereby inevitably become more inde-
pendent, these conditions no longer obtain for the whole group.
The peculiar cohesive power of custom is not enough for the
State and too much for the individual, while its content is too
much for the State and too little for the individual. The State
requires surer guarantees; the individual requires greater free-
dom. Only in those aspects in which the individual is still a
member of smaller groups is he still governed, socially, by
custom.

The fact that the lar ^ )a^i;tt3r: tboth requires and permits the
rigorous and objective nor m which is crystallized in la w, is so me-
[low to the g reater freedom, mobiTity. and Individual iza-

tion of its me mber s. Thisl^rocess involves the need for a clearer
detSTOlilMlbiTand severer surveillance of socially necessary in-
hibitions. But on the other hand, the increased restriction is
more bearable for the individual because, outside of it, he has a
sphere of freedom which is all the greater. The process becomes
the more evident, the more law, or a norm approaching it, is an
agency of inhibition and forbiddance. Among Brazilian aborig-
ines, a man is in general not allowed to marry the daughter of his
sister or his brother. This tabu is the more severe the larger

Custom, Law, Morality lOS

the tribe; while, in smaller, more isolated hordes brother and
sister frequently live together. The prohibitive character of the
norm — which is more characteristic of law than of custom — is
more indicated in the larger group, because this group compen-
sates the individual more richly and positively than the small
group does. There is still another aspect which shows that the
enlargement of the group favors the transition of its norms t o
the form of law . Numerous unifications of smaller groups into
larger ones occurred originally (or are maintained even perma-
nently) only for the sake of law enforcement; and their unity
is founded exclusively in a pervasive legal order. The county of
the New England states was originally only “an aggregation of
towns for judicial purposes.”

There a re apparen t exceptions to this dependenc e of cmt^m
and law on quantitative differences of group s. The original units
of the Germanic tribes, which resulted in the great Frankish,
English, and Swedish realms, were often able to preserve for
long periods their own jurisdictions that became state matters
only relatively late. Inversely, in modern international relations
there are many customs that have not yet become fixed as laws.
Again, within a particular state, certain modes of conduct are
regulated by law which in relation to the outside, that is, within
the ultimate group, must be left to the looser form of custom.

It is simple to account for these apparent exceptions.
Obviously, the size of the group requires the law form only to
the extent to which its elements form a unity. Where only
tenuous common characteristics, rather than a firm centraliza-
tion, permit the designation of the group as a group, the relative
character of this designation becomes clearly evident. “Social
unity” is a concept of degree. Variations in unity may be accom-
panied by changing the forms of group regulations, or by chang-
ing group size. Accordingly, a given form of regulation required
by a certain group size may be the same as that required by a
group of a different size, or it may be different from that required
by a group of the same size. The significance of numerical con-
ditions is thus not impaired when we find that a large group,
because of its special tasks, may do, or even must do, without
the legalization of its norms — something which in general is
characteristic only of smaller groups. The cumbersome state

104 On the Significance of Numbers for Social Life

forms of Germanic antiquity simply did not yet possess the cohe-
sion of their members which, if it occurs in the large group, is
both cause and effect of its legal constitution. By a similar argu-
ment we can explain why, in the collective as well as in the
individual relations among modem states, certain norms are
constituted by mere custom. The reason is the lack of a unity
above the parties which would be the vehicle of a legal order.
In both smaller and looser groups, this unity is replaced by the
immediate interaction among their members; and the regulation
which corresponds to this intimate interaction is custom. In other
words, the seeming exceptions actually confirm the connection
between custom and law, on the one hand, and the quantitative
aspects of the group, on the other.

Chapter 2

The Quantitative Determination
of Group Divisions
and of Certain Groups

§ !• Introduction

OBVIOUSLY, THE NOTIONS

‘'large§ ** and “small** groups are extremely crude scientific desig-
nations, indeterminate and vague. They are useful, really, only
as a suggestion that the sociological form of the group depend s
u pon its quantitative aspects . But they are quite insufficient to
show the real connection between the two in any more precise
manner. Yet it fs perhaps not always impossible to determine
this relation more exactly. To be sure, during the foreseeable
future in the development of our knowledge, it would be a
wholly fantastic enterprise if we wanted to express the formations
and relations so far discussed in exact numerical values. Never-
theless, within modest limits, namely in regard to characteristic
sociations among small numbers of persons, certain traits can be
indicated even at this stage of our knowledge. As transitions from
complete numerical determinateness, I shall discuss some cases
in which the quantitative determination of the group is already
of some sociological significance but is not yet fixed in every
detail.

§ 2. Numerically Equal Subdivisions

The number operates as a classificatory principle within the
group. That is, parts of the group which are formed through
enumeration function as relative units. At this point, I merely

105

106 Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

emphasize this general principle; later I shall discuss the sig-
nificance of particular individual numbers. The division of a
unified group, and more especially, its division not only from top
to bottom, in terms of ruling and being ruled, but among its
coordinated members, is one of the most extraordinary advances
made by mankind. It is the anatomical structure which forms the
basis of the higher organic and social processes. The classification
may derive from ancestry, or from associations based on volun-
tary pledges, or from identity of occupation, or from grouping
by local districts. All these principles of classification are com-
bined with the quantitative principle: the mass of existing men
or families is divided by a certain number and thus yields nu-
merically equal subdivisions. To each of them, the whole has
approximately the same relation as each subdivision has to its
component individuals. This principle is, however, so mechan-
ical that in order to operate it must be combined with a more
concrete one: numerical equal subdivisions are composed either
of persons who are somehow related — relatives, friends, neigh-
bors — or of equals or unequals who supplement one another.
Yet the numerical identity constitutes the formal principle of
classification, even though it never decides alone. But it always
plays its role, which may be very important, or may be almost
negligible.

Nomadic tribes, for instance, often lack all stable content
life; they hardly have any possibility of organization except by
number; and the significance of number for a group on the
march determines military organization to this day. Quite nat-
urally, the principle of division according to numerically equal
cadres is often applied to the distribution of a conquered terri-
tory or to the colonization of a newly discovered country when
(in the beginning at least) objective criteria of organization are
lacking. It governs, for instance, the oldest constitution of Ice-
land. By its very pure application, Kleisthenes’ reform achieved
one of the greatest social-historical innovations: when he insti-
tuted the Council of 500 members, fifty from each of the ten
phyles, he had every demos receive a number of councilorships
proportionate to the number of its inhabitants. The rational
idea of constituting a representative body out of the total group,
on a wholly numerical basis, transcends the stage of development

The Number as a Symbol of Group Division 107

characterized by the “century** [group of one hundred] (which
will be discussed later). For the first time in history, the purely
numerical division is used for establishing governmental units
as symbols of the population.

§ 3. The Number as a Symbol of Group Division

Thus far we have discussed cases where different subdivisions
are numerically equal. Numbers can also be used, however, to
characterize a group, more particularly, a leading group of per-
sons, within a larger totality. Thus, guild masters were often
designated by their number: in Frankfort, the wool weavers*
heads were called the “Six,** and the bakers* the “Eight**; in
medieval Barcelona, the senate was known as the “Hundred**;
etc. It is very remarkable how the most outstanding persons are
called after the least characteristic feature, number, which is
completely indifferent to all quality. The basis of this, it seems
to me, lies in the fact that “six** (or any other such number) does
not refer to six individual and isolated elements but to their
synthesis. “Six’* is not “i plus i plus i,** etc., but a new concept
emerging from the synthesis of these elements: it is not^ so to
speak, proportionately present in each of them. In this book,
I of ten designate the living, functional interaction of elements
as their unity, which is above their mere sum, and in sociologi cal
co ntrast with it . And we do find here that when an administrative
body or a committee, etc,, is called by its mere number, in reality
the idea expressed by this sum is the functional interactive to-
getherness of the group; and the numerical designation is pos-
sible because a number does refer to a unit consisting of other
units. In the case mentioned, the “Six** are not dispersed over
a homogeneous group but reflect a particular differentiation of
it, by virtue of which six of its members are singled out and grow
together into a leading unit. It is exactly the characterless and
impersonal nature of numerical designation which is characteris-
tic here: more forcefully than any other less formal concept
could do it, it indicates the fact that it refers not to individuals
as persons but to a purely social structure. The structure of the
group requires a certain quota of its members for leadership.
The purely numerical concept implies the purely objective

108 Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

character of the formation, which is indifferent to any personal
features the member may have, and only requires that he be one
of the ‘'Six/* Really, there is perhaps no more effective way of
expressing an individual’s high social status, along with the
complete irrelevance of whatever he may be as a person outside
his group function.

This sort of group unit which is revealed by the numerical
distinction of certain group elements receives particular em-
phasis in an apparently contradictory case. The above-mentioned
Barcelona senate, the “Hundred,” actually came to have more
than lOO members (up to 200 ), without for that reason changing
its name. A similar phenomenon occurs when the number op-
erates not as a distinguishing, but as a classifying principle:
where populations are divided by hundreds (see below), the exact
preservation of this number for each subdivision is probably
never strictly enforced. This is explicitly reported in regard to
the old Germanic Hundreds. The number, in other words, be-
comes the immediate synonym of the social subdivision (which
only originally included, or was supposed to include, exactly
such a number of individuals). This seemingly trifling fact shows
the enormous importance which the numerical character has for
the structure of the group. The number becomes independent
even of its arithmetic content: all it indicates is that the relation
of the members to the whole is numerical; the number, which
has become stable, represents this relation. To consist of a hun-
dred elements remains, as it were, the idea of the subdivision,
while empirical conditions reflect this idea only imperfectly.
It has been said of the Germanic Hundreds that they were sup-
posed to express only an indeterminate number somewhere
between the single individual and the whole society; and, in
fact, this very clearly describes the sociological phenomenon
discussed here. The life of the group requires some medium
between the One and the All, an agent of certain functions that
neither the individual nor the totality can carry out, and the
group designated for this task is called after its numerical de-
termination. It is not its functions which give it its name, for
they are numerous and changing; what is stable is only the articu-
lation of some part of the totality into a unit. The size of this
part varies from case to case; the ever-recurring designation by

Group Organization on Numerical Principles 109

number shows that the numerical relation itself is felt to be
essential.

We are here confronted in the social field with a process
whose psychological form is also seen elsewhere. Thus, the
various types of Russian coins are supposed to derive from an
old system of weights in which each higher denomination con-
tained ten times the amount of the next lower. In actuality,
however, both the absolute and the relative metallic contents of
the coins changed, while their respective values, once they had
been brought into the numerical order described, remained the
same. In other words, the actual metallic-value relations among
the coins shift. But the function, which the coins fulfill by virtue
of their constant nominal-value relations, derives from the his-
torically earliest weight proportions which have given the
nominal-value relations permanent names and symbols. There
are still more cases in which the number comes to represent the
thing that it counts. In all of them the essential feature is, once
more, that the relation between whole and part is designated by
the earliest numerical concept that covers all later changes. The
tax on miners in sixteenth-century Spain was called the quinto
because it amounted to one-fifth the value of the mined metal;
and it kept this name although value proportions changed con-
siderably. The word ‘‘tithe,"' among the old Israelites and in
many other places, came to refer to any sort of tribute whatever —
as “Hundred” came to stand for “subdivision” in general.
Psychologically, the quantitative relation, which is the principle
of taxation as much as of social division, leaves its particular
contents behind. This is seen most decisively in the fact that the
original numerical characterization comes to designate any
modifications of the subdivision to which it originally referred.

§ 4 . Group Organization on Numerical Principles and
Its Effect upon the Individual

Numerical characterization as a form of organization marks
an important step in the development of society. Historically,
numerical division replaces the principle of the sib. It seems
that in many places groups originally consisted of subgroups
which were tied to one another by kinship and each of which

110 Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

formed a unit in economic, political, penal, and other respects.
The fact that this intrinsically well-founded organization was
replaced by divisions of ten or a hundred men each, who were
united for the performance of particular tasks, looks, at first
glance, like a strange, superficial process, like a schematization
lacking all inner life. And indeed, we would search the inherent,
cohesive principles of these groups in vain to find a justification
why the older order with its organic roots was replaced by a
mechanic and formalistic one. The reason for this change rather
lies in the whole group which is composed of such subdivisions
and whose requirements are autonomous and not the same as
the life principles of its parts. In the measure in which the whole
unit gains in content and strength, its parts lose their own sig-
nificance — at least in the beginning, and at the stage preceding
the highest development, as we shall see presently. The parts
transfer their own significance to the larger group. They are the
more useful, the less they embody their own ideas and the more,
as colorless parts, they receive some position and significance
from their contributions to the whole. This is not true in certain
highest types of development: there are social structures which
precisely when they have attained a very large size and a perfect
organization, can grant the individual the greatest freedom to
live his life according to his own particular norms and in the
most individualized form. And on the other hand, there are
groups which reach their greatest strength only when their mem-
bers have attained the most intense and differentiated indi-
vidualization. The transition from sib to Hundred, however,
seems to characterize that intermediate stage where the mem-
bers' intrinsic lack of significance and character marks an advance
of the whole. For only in divisions by Hundreds are the indi-
vidual members easily surveyed and guided according to
simple norms and without resistance to the central power, a
resistance which arises only too easily when each subgroup has
a strong feeling of inner solidarity.

Where the organization or action of the group is numerically
defined — from the old Hundred to modern majority rule — the
individual is violated. This is a point at which the profound
inner discrepancy between the properly democratic and the
liberal-individualistic idea of society appears with striking evi-

The Social Gathering ('Tarty*) 111

dence. That personalities are transformed into “round numbers”
operating without regard for the peculiarities of the individuals
who constitute these numbers; that votes are counted rather than
weighed; that institutions, commands, prohibitions, services, and
privileges are defined in terms of certain numbers of persons, at
least in principle — this is either despotic or democratic. Whether
it is one or the other, it involves a diminution of the specific and
full content of the individual personality and its substitution by
the formal fact that the personality is, simply, one. By occupying
a place in an organization which is determined by number only,
its character as a group member has completely superseded its
individual and differentiated character. Whether the division
into numerically equal subgroups be as crude and practically
as often modified as it was in the Germanic, Peruvian, Chinese
Hundreds, or as refined, efficient, and exact as it is in the modern
army — it always shows the autonomy of the group in the clearest
and most pitiless manner. In the first case, this group autonomy
is a newly emerging tendency which still fights and compromises
with other tendencies; in the second case, it is an absolute victory.
The super-individual character of the group, the fact that its
form no longer depends upon any contents of the component
individuals, is noi^diere seen in a more absolute and emphatic
manner than in the reduction of the principles of organization
to purely arithmetic relations. The measure to which these
numerical principles are approximated in practice — a matter
which greatly varies from group to group — also is the measure
to which the group idea in its most abstract form absorbs the
individualities of its members.

§ 5 . The Social Gathering ('Tarty^^)

The sociological importance of quantitative aspects may also
be observed in a social type which is characteristic of modern
society, namely, the social gathering, or “party.” The number
of persons at a “party” greatly varies, of course, according to
circumstances. But there is still the question of how many per-
sons must be invited before a “party” results. Evidently, this
question is not answered by qualitative relations between host
and guests. On the other hand, the group of two or three persons

112 Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

whom we meet quite formally and without any real contact,
never constitutes a “party.*' But we do have one when we invite,
say, fifteen of our closest friends. The number always remains
decisive, although its specific magnitude depends, of course, on
the kind and intimacy of the relations among the people. Three
circumstances — the host’s relations to each of the guests, the rela-
tions among the guests, and the way in which each participant
interprets these relations — form the basis upon which the num-
ber of members decides whether there occurs a “party” or a mere
togetherness of a friendly or of an objective-utilitarian sort.
A numerical modification, therefore, here produces a distinctly
felt transformation into a specific sociological category, however
little our psychological means enable us to determine the
measure of this modification. But we can approximately describe
at least the qualitative and sociological consequences of this
quantitative occurrence.

In the first place, a “party” requires a very specific external
setup. If one invites one or two persons out of some thirty
friends, one does not have to “put oneself to any trouble.” But
if one invites all thirty at the same time, entirely new require-
ments come up at once — in regard to food, drink, dress, forms
of behavior; in short, there is a greatly increased consumption
of things attractive and enjoyable to the senses. This is a very
clear example of how seriously the mere formation of a mass
lowers the level of the personality. A gathering of only a few
persons permits considerable mutual adaptation. Common traits,
which make up the content of sociability among these few in-
dividuals, may include such comprehensive or refined aspects
of their personalities that the gathering attains a character of
spiritual refinement, of highly differentiated and developed
psychic energies. But the more persons come together, the less
is it probable that they converge in the more valuable and inti-
mate sides of their natures, and the lower, therefore, lies the
point that is common to their impulses and interests.*^

c Hence the complaint about the banality of social contact in the large betrays
a complete lack of sociological understanding. It is unavoidable in principle, that
the level at which a larger group in physical proximity can meet at all, should be
relatively low. For, all higher and finer differentiations are of an individual nature
and therefore are unsuitable for contents that could be shared. It is true that they
may have a sociating effect, namely, where a unity is striven for by means of a

The Social Gathering (*Tarty**) 113

In the same degree in which the sheer number of individuals
curtails the play of their higher and specific psychologies, an
attempt must be made to compensate for this lack by an intensi-
fication of external and sensuous attractions. Large numbers of
persons that are assembled for some celebration have always
been closely associated with a display of sensuous pleasure and
luxury. At the end of the Middle Ages, for instance, the luxury
exhibited at weddings by the mere number of attendants that
accompanied the bridal pair increased to such a point that the
sumptuary laws sometimes prescribed the exact maximum num-
ber of persons that were allowed to form the escort. In an
analogous manner, food and drink have always been the common
denominators of large groups for which any other shared mood
or interest are hard to attain. A ‘‘party,” therefore, merely be-
cause of its emphasis on number, which excludes a common
interaction of more refined and intellectual moods, must all the
more strongly make use of these sensuous joys, that are shared
by all with incomparably greater certainty.

There is a second characteristic of the “party” that is based
on its numerical difference from the meeting of only a few
individuals. It is the fact that a complete harmony of mood,
which is so characteristic of the small group, is here neither
sought, nor could it be attained if it were. On the contrary —
and this is a further difference — there easily occurs the formation
of subgroups. The nature of a friendly gathering among few
persons strenuously militates against its splitting up into two
moods, even only into two conversations. In fact, the moment
there is a dualism instead of an undisputed single center, we
have a “party.” The dualism consists in this. On the one hand,
there is a general but very loose core, which has only an external
or even only a spatial basis. This is the reason why “parties”
whose members come from the same social stratum resemble
one another as wholes the more closely the larger they are, irre-
spective of any variation or change in personnel. On the other
hand, there is a continuous alteration between involvement and

division of labor. This, however, is possible at a “party” only to a very slight extent,
and if it were to occur in a more considerable measure, it would destroy the very
nature of the “party.” It is therefore a sociologically quite correct instinct which
often makes us consider the stressing of personal characteristics at a “party,” as a
slight tactlessness — even where these characteristics are interesting and pleasing.

114 Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

release which, according to the nature of the individual, affects
him as the most unbearable superficiality, or as a playful rhythm
of great aesthetic charm.

The formal-sociological type under discussion is embodied
very clearly by the modern ball. Here the momentary, peculiar
intimacy of the couple is transformed into a new phenomenon
by its constant change among all the couples. The physical near-
ness between total strangers is made possible by two factors. On
the one hand, all participants in the ball are guests of a host
who, however loose their relations may be to him, nevertheless
guarantees a certain reciprocal security and legitimation. On
the other hand, relations are impersonal and as it were anony-
mous, because of the magnitude of the group and the associated
formalism of behavior. These characteristics of the large ‘'party,§ **
which the ball presents in a sublimated if not caricatured form,
depend on a certain minimum number of participants. In fact,
occasionally one can make the interesting observation that an
intimate circle of a few persons attains the character of a “party**
if only one more person is added to it.

§ 6 . The Extended Family

There is one case (which, however, concerns a much less
complex human group) where the number that produces a par-
ticular sociological structure appears rather definitely fixed.
In many different places, the extended patriarchal family always
numbers from twenty to thirty members, in spite of very dif-
ferent economic conditions. These conditions, therefore, cannot,
or not exclusively, determine the recurrence of the number.
It is rather probable that the kind of intrinsic interactions that
is characteristic of this particular family structure, produces the
required proportions of narrowness and latitude only within
these numerical limits.

The patriarchal family is everywhere characterized by great
intimacy and solidarity with its center in the pater familias, and
by the guardianship over the affairs of each member that is
exerted by the father, both in the interest of the whole and in
his own. This determines the upper limit: given the psycholog-
ical development that corresponds with this form of the family.

Quantity and Quality 115

the kind of dependence and control characteristic of it seems
to fail if it is extended over a larger number of individuals. The
lower limit is given by the fact that autonomous groups must
develop certain collective psychological features if they are to
be self-sufficient and to maintain themselves; and this is possible
only above a certain number. These features are readiness for
offense and defense, confidence of each member to find at all
times what support and supplementation he may need, and
above all, a religious mood whose elevation and sublimation rise
above the individual (or elevate the individual above himself)
only if there is a mixture of many contributions and an extinc-
tion of the separate, individual religiosity. The number men-
tioned may have indicated the approximate range, as found by
experience, above and below which the group could not go if
it was to develop these traits of the extended patriarchal family.
Before this range was found, increasing individualization seems
to have restricted such intimacy to ever smaller numbers of
persons, while on the other hand, the factors which appealed
to an increased size of the family required, in fact, an ever larger
group. The needs from above and from below that were satisfied
precisely by this numerical structure have since become dif-
ferentiated. Part of them demands a smaller, part a larger group,
so that later we no longer find a structure which meets them in
the same unified manner as the patriarchal family did.

§ 7 . Quantity and Quality

Aside from such singular cases, all questions of which the
numerical requirements of a “party” was an example, have the
tone of sophistry. How many soldiers make an army? How many
participants are needed to form a political party? How many
people make a crowd? All seem to repeat the classical riddle:
How many grains of wheat make a heap? Since one, two, three,
or four grains do not, while a thousand certainly do, there must
be a limit after which the addition of a single grain transforms
the existing single grains into a “heap.” But if the attempt at
such an enumeration is made, it appears that nobody can indicate
this limit. The logical ground of the difficulty lies in this. We
are dealing with a quantitative series each of whose individual

116 Quantitative Determination of Group Divisions

members is relatively insignificant. For this reason, the series
appears to be continuous and ascending without break. Yet at
the same time, this same series is supposed to permit, at a certain
point, the application o£ a qualitatively new concept which is
completely different from the concept previously employed.
This, obviously, is an inconsistent demand: the continuous, by
its very definition, cannot evolve, purely out of itself, a sudden
break and transmutation. Yet the sociological difficulty shows a
complication beyond the problem faced by the ancient Sophists.
For, “heap** of grains either refers to a pile, and then the desig-
nation is logically justified as soon as one other layer is added
to the undermost layer. Or ‘'heap** refers to “quantity in gen-
eral,** and then it is quite unjustifiable to demand of this concept,
which by definition is vague and undetermined, that it apply
only to strictly determined and unequivocally defined realities.

In sociological cases, however, increasing quantity results in
entirely new phenomena which, in a smaller number, seem to be
absent even in a slighter proportion. A political party has a
qualitatively different significance from a small clique. A few
people who stand together from curiosity show traits different
from those of a “crowd**; etc. The uncertainty of all these con-
cepts results from the impossibility of ascertaining any particular
quantity. It may perhaps be removed in this manner. Evidently
the uncertainty only applies to certain intermediate magnitudes.
Very small numbers unquestionably do not result in political
parties, crowds, etc., while very large ones do so most assuredly.
But the numerically small structures also have characteristic
sociological qualities — as, for instance, the gathering which is
not yet a “party,** the troop of soldiers which does not yet make
up an army, the conniving rogues who do not yet constitute a
“gang.** These qualities contrast with other qualities which are
unquestionably the traits of the large group. The character of
the numerically intermediate structure, therefore, can be ex-
plained as a mixture of both: so that each of the features of both
the small and the large group appears, in the intermediate group,
as a fragmentary trait, now emerging, now disappearing or be-
coming latent.

Thus, the intermediate structures objectively share the es-
sential character of the smaller and of the larger structures — par-

Quantity and Quality 117

tially or alternately. This explains the subjective uncertainty
regarding the decision to which o£ the two they belong. The
point, thus, is not that a highly specific sociological constellation
suddenly emerges (like a crystal in a solution) in a structure
which has no sociological quality whatever, and that there is no
way of ascertaining the moment of this transformation. Rather,
there are two different formations each of which has certain traits
and can be arranged on many qualitative continua. Uri^der cer-
tain quantitative conditions, these two formations fuse into a
social structure which they divide between themselves in varying
degrees. The question, therefore, in which of the two formations
the social structure belongs, does not suffer from any epistemo-
logical difficulties characteristic of continuous series, but is an
objectively false question.®

6 More exactly, however, the situation is probably this. To each particular num-
ber of elements, according to the purpose and significance of their grouping, there
corresponds a sociological form, organization, firmness, stability, relation of whole
to parts, etc., which changes with each added or subtracted element, although the
change may be immeasurably small and not ascertainable. We do not have a par-
ticular term for each of these innumerable sociological states, even where we notice
its character. We, therefore, are often forced to think of it as composed of two
states, of which the one strikes us as more important, and the other as less. But we
have as little to do with sums, properly speaking, as we do in the case of the
so-called mixed feelingioC friendship and love, hate and contempt, or pleasure and
pain. Rather (we shall have to come back to this), we usually deal here with uni-
form feelings, for which we merely have no directly applicable concept. Therefore,
instead of describing them, we circumscribe them by means of a synthesis and
mutual delimitation of two other concepts.

Here as elsewhere, the intrinsic unity of being is inconceivable to us. We arc
forced to dissolve it into a duality of elements, neither of which quite covers it
and from whose interweaving we make it result. But to do this is only a conceptual
analysis which is possible in retrospect and which does not retrace the real genetic
process, the real being of the unit. Therefore, where the available designations of
social units — “gathering” and “society,” “troop” and “army,” “clique” and “party,”
“pair” and “band,” “personal following” and “school,” “small group” and “mass
demonstration” — cannot be applied with certainty, because the number of people
under consideration seems too slight for one and too large for another, we are
nevertheless dealing with a specific sociological form. It is exactly as unified as is
the more clearly defined case, and it corresponds to an equally precise numerical
condition. Only the lack of specific concepts for the designation of these innumer-
able nuances compels us to denote their qualities as mixtures of forms correlated
with numerically inferior and numerically superior structures.

Chapter 3

The Isolated Individual
and the Dyad

§ 1 . Introduction

OUR STATEMENTS UP TO

this point concerned social formations which depend on the
number of their component elements. But our insight was in-
capable of formulating this dependence in a way which would
have allowed us to derive sociological consequences from certain
specific numbers. This is not impossible, however, if we con-
tent ourselves with sufficiently simple structures. If we begin
with the lower limit of the numerical series, there appear
arithmetically definite magnitudes as the unequivocal pre-
suppositions of characteristic sociological formations.

§ 2 . The Isolated Individual

The numerically simplest structures which can still be desig-
nated as social interactions occur between two elements. Never-
theless, there is an externally even simpler phenomenon that
belongs among sociological categories, however paradoxical and
in fact contradictory this may seem — namely, the isolated indi-
vidual. As a matter of fact, however, the processes that shape
elements in the dual are often simpler than those required for
the sociological characterization of the singular. For this, two
phenomena are above all relevant here: isolation and freedom.
The mere fact that an individual does not interact with others
is, of course, not a sociological fact, but neither does it express
the whole idea of isolation. For, isolation, insofar as it is import-
ant to the individual, refers by no means only to the absence

118

The Isolated Individual 119

of society. On the contrary, the idea involves the somehow
imagined, but then rejected, existence of society. Isolation at-
tains its unequivocal, positive significance only as society’s effect
at a distance — whether as lingering-on of past relations, as antici-
pation of future contacts, as nostalgia, or as an intentional turn-
ing away from society. The isolated man does not suggest a being
that has been the only inhabitant of the globe from the begin-
ning. For his condition, too, is determined by sociation, even
though negatively. The whole joy and the whole bitterness of
isolation are only different reactions to socially experienced
influences. Isolation is interaction between two parties, one of
which leaves, after exerting certain influences. The isolated indi-
vidual is isolated only in reality, however; for ideally, in the mind
of the other party, he continues to live and act.

A well-known psychological fact is very relevant here. The
feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one
actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger,
without relations, among many physically close persons, at a
“party,” on a train, or in the traffic of a large city. The question
whetlier a group favors or even permits such loneliness in its
midst is an essential trait of the group structure itself. Close and
intimate communities often allow no such intercellular vacuums.
When we speak of anti-socal phenomena like wretched persons,
criminals, prostitutes, suicides, etc., we may refer to them as a
social deficit that is produced in a certain proportion to social
conditions. In a similar way, a given quantity and quality of
social life creates a certain number of temporarily or chronically
lonely existences, although they cannot as easily be ascertained
by statistics as can these others.

§ 3. Isolation

Isolation thus is a relation which is lodged within an indivi-
dual but which exists between him and a certain group or group
life in general. But it is sociologically significant in still another
way: it may also be an interruption or periodic occurrence in
a given relationship between two or more persons. As such, it is
especially important in those relations whose very nature is the
denial of isolation. This applies, above all, to monogamous mar-

120 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

riage. The structure of a particular marriage, of course, may not
even involve the finest and most intimate nuances of the mates.
But where it does, there is an essential difference between the
case in which they have preserved the joy of individual isolation
in spite of the perfect happiness of their life in common, and
the case in which the relation is never interrupted by devotion
to solitude. The second case may have various reasons. Habitua-
tion to the life in common may have deprived isolation of its
attractiveness; or insufficient certainty of love may make inter-
ruption by solitude feared as unfaithfulness or, what is worse, as
a danger to faithfulness. At any rate, it is clear that isolation is not
limited to the individual and is not the mere negation of associa-
tion. It also has a positive sociological significance. As a con-
scious feeling on the part of the individual, it represents a very
specific relation to society. And furthermore, its occurrence
changes the nature of both large and very intimate groups,
whereby it may be the cause as well as the effect of this change.

§ 4. Freedom

Here, too, belongs one of the many sociological aspects of
freedom. At first glance, freedom, like isolation, seems to be the
mere negation of sociation. For, while every sociation involves a
tie, the free man does not form a unit with others, but is a unit
by himself. It may be that there is a kind of freedom which is
actually nothing but the lack of relations, or the absence of re-
strictions by others. A Christian or Hindu hermit, a lonely settler
in the old Germanic or, more recently, in the American forests,
may enjoy freedom in the sense that his existence is completely
filled by non-social contents; and something similar may be said
of a collectivity (a house community or a state, for instance) that
exists, like an island, with no neighbors and with no relations
to other collectivities. But, for an individual who does have
relations to other individuals, freedom has a much more posi-
tive significance. For him, freedom itself is a specific relation to
the environment. It is a correlative phenomenon which loses
its very meaning in the absence of a counterpart. In regard to
this counterpart, freedom has two aspects that are of the greatest
importance for the structure of society.

Freedom 121

(1) For social man, freedom is neither a state that exists
always and can be taken for granted, nor a possession of a ma-
terial substance, so to speak, that has been acquired once and all.
One reason why freedom is none of these things we shall see in
a moment. It should be noted that every important claim which
engages the strength of the individual in a certain direction
has the tendency to go on indefinitely, to appear completely
autonomous. Almost all relations — of the state, the party, the
family, of friendship or love — quite naturally, as it were, seem
to be on an inclined plane: if they were left to themselves, they
would extend their claims over the whole of man. They are,
often uncannily, surrounded by an ideal halo from which the
individual must explicitly mark oft some reserve of forces, devo-
tions, and interests that he has taken away from these relations.
But it is not only through the extensity of claims that the egoism
of every sociation threatens the freedom of the individuals en-
gaged in it. It does so also through the relentlessness of the claim
itself, which is one-tracked and monopolistic. Usually, each
claim presses its rights in complete and pitiless indifference to
other interests and duties, no matter whether they be in harmony
or in utter incompatibility with it. It thus limits the individual's
freedom as much as does the large number of the claims on him.
In the face of this nature of our relations, freedom emerges as a
continuous process of liberation, as a fight, not only for our
independence, but also for the right, at every moment and of
our own free will, to remain dependent. This fight must be re-
newed after every victory. Thus, the absence of relations, as a
negative social behavior, is almost never a secure possession but
an incessant release from ties which actually limit the autonomy
of the individual or which ideally strive to do so. Freedom is not
solipsistic existence but sociological action. It is not a condition
limited to the single individual but a relationship, even though
it is a relationship from the standpoint of the individual.

(2) Freedom is something quite different from rejection of
relations or immunity of the individual sphere from adjacent
spheres — not only in the function described, but also in its con-
tents. This is suggested by the simple recognition of the fact
that man does not only want to be free, but wants to use his
freedom for some purpose. In large part, however, this use is

122 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

nothing but the domination and exploitation of other men. To
the social individual, that is, the individual who lives in constant
interaction with others, freedom is very often without any con-
tent and purpose if it does not permit, or even consist in, the
extension of his will over others. Our idiom correctly charac-
terizes certain brusque and violent acts as '‘taking liberties
with somebody.” In related fashion, many languages use their
word for “freedom” in the sense of “right” or “privilege.” The
purely negative character of freedom, as a relation of the indi-
vidual to himself, is thus supplemented in two directions by a
very positive character. To a great extent, freedom consists in a
process of liberation; it rises above a bond, contrasts with a
bond; it finds its meaning, consciousness, and value only as a
reaction to it. But it no less consists in a power relation to others,
in the possibility of making oneself count within a given rela-
tionship, in the obligation or submission of others, in which
alone it finds its value and application. The significance of free-
dom as something limited to the subject himself, thus, appears
as the watershed between its two social functions, as it were; and
they are based on the simple fact that the individual is tied by
others and ties others. The subjective significance of freedom
hence approximates zero, but it reveals its real significance in this
twofold sociological relation, even where freedom is conceived
as an individual quality.

§ 5 . The Dyad

We see that such phenomena as isolation and freedom actu-
ally exist as forms of sociological relations, although they often
do so only by means of complex and indirect connections. In
view of this fact, the simplest sociological formation, methodo-
logically speaking, remains that which operates between two
elements. It contains the scheme, germ, and material of in-
numerable more complex forms. Its sociological significance,
however, by no means rests on its extensions and multiplications
only. It itself is a sociation. Not only are many general forms of
sociation realized in it in a very pure and characteristic fashion;
what is more, the limitation to two members is a condition under
which alone several forms of relationship exist. Their typically

The Dyad 12S

sociological nature is suggested by two facts. One is that the
greatest variation of individualities and unifying motives does
not alter the identity of these forms. The other is that occasionally
these forms exist as much between two groups — families, states,
and organizations of various kinds — as between two individuals.

Everyday experiences show the specific character that a rela-
tionship attains by the fact that only two elements participate
in it. A common fate or enterprise, an agreement or secret be-
tween two persons, ties each of them in a very different manner
than if even only three have a part in it. This is perhaps most
characteristic of the secret. General experience seems to indicate
that this minimum of two, with which the secret ceases to be
the property of the one individual, is at the same time the maxi-
mum at which its preservation is relatively secure. A secret
religious-political society which was formed in the beginning of
the nineteenth century in France and Italy, had different degrees
among its members. The real secrets of the society were known
only to the higher degrees; but a discussion of these secrets could
take place only between any two members of the high degrees.
The limit of two was felt to be so decisive that, where it could
not be preserved in regard to knowledge, it was kept at least in
regard to the vedbalization of this knowledge. More generally
speaking, the difference between the dyad and larger groups
consists in the fact that the dyad has a different relation to each
of its two elements than have larger groups to their members.
Although, for the outsider, the group consisting of two may
function as an autonomous, super-individual unit, it usually
does not do so for its participants. Rather, each of the two feels
himself confronted only by the other, not by a collectivity above
him. The social structure here rests immediately on the one and
on the other of the two, and the secession of either would destroy
the whole. The dyad, therefore, does not attain that super-per-
sonal life which the individual feels to be independent of him-
self. As soon, however, as there is a sociation of three, a group
continues to exist even in case one of the members drops out.

This dependence of the dyad upon its two individual mem-
bers causes the thought of its existence to be accompanied by

t Never Simmel’s term, but shorter and more convenient than his, which here,
for instance, is *‘Zweierverhindun^* (“union of two”). — Tr.

124 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

the thought of its termination much more closely and impres-
sively than in any other group, where every member knows that
even after his retirement or death, the group can continue to
exist. Both the lives of the individual and that of the sociation
are somehow colored by the imagination of their respective
deaths. And ‘‘imagination*’ does not refer here only to theoreti-
cal, conscious thought, but to a part or a modification of existence
itself. Death stands before us, not like a fate that will strike at a
certain moment but, prior to that moment, exists only as an
idea or prophecy, as fear or hope, and without interfering with
the reality of this life. Rather, the fact that we shall die is a
quality inherent in life from the beginning. In all our living
reality, there is something which merely finds its last phase or
revelation in our death: we are, from birth on, beings that will
die. We are this, of course, in different ways. The manner in
which we conceive this nature of ours and its final effect, and in
which we react to this conception, varies greatly. So does the
way in which this element of our existence is interwoven with
its other elements. But the same observations can be made in
regard to groups. Ideally, any large group can be immortal. This
fact gives each of its members, no matter what may be his per-
sonal reaction to death, a very specific sociological feeling.® A
dyad, however, depends on each of its two elements alone — in its
death, though not in its life: for its life, it needs both, but for its
death, only one. This fact is bound to influence the inner atti-
tude of the individual toward the dyad, even though not always
consciously nor in the same way. It makes the dyad into a group
that feels itself both endangered and irreplaceable, and thus into
the real locus not only of authentic sociological tragedy, but also
of sentimentalism and elegiac problems.

This feeling tone appears wherever the end of the union has
become an organic part of its structure. Not long ago, there
came news from a city in northern France regarding a strange
“Association of the Broken Dish.” Years ago, some industrialists
met for dinner. During the meal, a dish fell on the floor and
broke. One of the diners noted that the number of pieces was
identical with that of those present. One of them considered this

8Cf. the more detailed discussion of this point in the chapter on the per-
sistence of groups. [Not contained in this volume.]

Characteristics of the Dyad 125

an omen, and, in consequence of it, they founded a society of
friends who owed one another service and help. Each of them
took a part of the dish home with him. If one of them dies, his
piece is sent to the president, who glues the fragments he receives
together. The last survivor will fit the last piece, whereupon the
reconstituted dish is to be interred. The “Society of the Broken
Dish” will thus dissolve and disappear. The feeling within that
society, as well as in regard to it, would no doubt be different
if new members were admitted and the life of the group thereby
perpetuated indefinitely. The fact that from the beginning it is
defined as one that will die gives it a peculiar stamp — which
the dyad, because of the numerical condition of its structure,
has always.

§ 6 . Characteristics of the Dyad

[a] TRIVIALITY

It is for the same structural reason that in reality dyads alone
are susceptible to the peculiar coloration or discoloration which
we call triviality. For only where there is a claim on the irre-
placeable individuality of appearance or performance, does its
failure to materialize produce a feeling of triviality. We have
hardly paid sufficient attention to the way in which relationships
of like content take on a different color, according to whether
their members think that there are many, or only very few,
similar ones. And it is by no means only erotic relations which
attain a special, significant timbre, beyond their describable
content and value, through the notion that an experience like
theirs has never existed before. Quite generally in fact, there is
perhaps hardly any object of external possession whose value —
not only its economic value — is not co-determined, consciously
or no, by its rarity or frequency. And so, perhaps no relation
is independent, in its inner significance for the participants, of
the factor of “how many other times, too”; and this factor may
even refer to the repetition of the same contents, situations,
excitations within the relationship. “Triviality” connotes a cer-
tain measure of frequency, of the consciousness that a content
of life is repeated, while the value of this content depends on its
very opposite — a certain measure of rarity. In regard to the life

126 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

of a super-individual societal unit and the relation of the indi-
vidual to such a unit, this question seems not to emerge. Here,
where the content of the relation transcends individuality, indi-
viduality in the sense of uniqueness or rarity seems to play no
role, and its non-existence, therefore, seems not to have the effect
of triviality. But in dyadic relations — love, marriage, friendship
— and in larger groupings (often, for instance, “social parties”)
which do not result in higher units, the tone of triviality fre-
quently becomes desperate and fatal. This phenomenon indicates
the sociological character of the dyad: the dyad is inseparable
from the immediacy of interaction; for neither of its two ele-
ments is it the super-individual unit which elsewhere confronts
the individual, while at the same time it makes him participate
in it.

[b] INTIMACY

In the dyad, the sociological process remains, in principle,
within personal interdependence and does not result in a struc-
ture that grows beyond its elements. This also is the basis of
“intimacy.” The “intimate” character of certain relations seems
to me to derive from the individual's inclination to consider that
which distinguishes him from others, that which is individual in
a qualitative sense, as the core, value, and chief matter of his
existence. The inclination is by no means always justifiable; in
many people, the very opposite — that which is typical, which
they share with many — is the essence and the substantial value
of their personality. The same phenomenon can be noted in
regard to groups. They, too, easily make their specific content,
that is shared only by the members, not by outsiders, their center
and real fulfillment. Here we have the form of intimacy.

In probably each relation, there is a mixture of ingredients
that its participants contribute to it alone and to no other, and
of other ingredients that are not characteristic of it exclusively,
but in the same or similar fashion are shared by its members
with other persons as well. The peculiar color of intimacy exists
if the ingredients of the first type, or more briefly, if the “in-
ternal” side of the relation, is felt to be essential; if its whole
affective structure is based on what each of the two participants
gives or shows only to the one other person and to nobody else.

Characteristics of the Dyad 127

In other words, intimacy is not based on the content of the rela-
tionship. Two relationships may have an identical mixture of
the two types of ingredients, of individual-exclusive and expan-
sive contents. But only that is intimate in which the former func-
tion as the vehicle or the axis of the relation itself. Inversely, cer-
tain external situations or moods may move us to make very
personal statements and confessions, usually reserved for our
closest friends only, to relatively strange people. But in such
cases we nevertheless feel that this ‘'intimate'* content does not
yet make the relation an intimate one. For in its basic signifi-
cance, the whole relation to these people is based only on its
general, un-individual ingredients. That “intimate" content,
although we have perhaps never revealed it before and thus
limit it entirely to this particular relationship, does nevertheless
not become the basis of its form, and thus leaves it outside the
sphere of intimacy.

It is this nature of intimacy which so often makes it a danger
to close unions between two persons, most commonly perhaps
to marriage. The spouses share the indifferent “intimacies" of
the day, the amiable and the unpleasant features of every hour,
and the weaknesses that remain carefully hidden from all others.
This easily causes them to place the accent and the substance of
their relationship upon these wholly individual but objectively
irrelevant matters. It leads them to consider what they share
with others and what perhaps is the most important part of their
personalities — objective, intellectual, generally interesting, gen-
erous features — as lying outside the marital relation; and thus
they gradually eliminate it from their marriage.

It is obvious that the intimacy of the dyad is closely tied up
with its sociological specialty, not to form a unit transcending
the two members. For, in spite of the fact that the two individuals
would be its only participants, this unit would nevertheless
constitute a third element which might interpose itself between
them. The larger the group is, the more easily does it form an
objective unit up and above its members, and the less intimate
does it become: the two characteristics are intrinsically con-
nected. The condition of intimacy consists in the fact that the
participants in a given relationship see only one another, and do
not see, at the same time, an objective, super-individual struc-

128 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

ture which they feel exists and operates on its own. Yet in all
its purity, this condition is met only rarely even in groups of as
few as three. Likewise, the third element in a relation between
two individuals — the unit which has grown out of the interac-
tion among the two — interferes with the most intimate nature of
the dyad; and this is highly characteristic of its subtler structure.
Indeed, it is so fundamental that even marriages occasionally
succumb to it, namely, when the first child is born. The point
deserves some further elaboration.

§ 7. Monogamous Marriage

The fact that male and female strive after their mutual union
is the foremost example or primordial image of a dualism which
stamps our life-contents generally. It always presses toward
reconciliation, and both success and failure of the reconcilia-
tion reveal this basic dualism only the more clearly. The union
of man and woman is possible, precisely because they are oppo-
sites. As something essentially unattainable, it stands in the way
of the most passionate craving for convergence and fusion. The
fact that, in any real and absolute sense, the “L' can not seize
the “not-I,*' is felt nowhere more deeply than here, where their
mutual supplementation and fusion seem to be the very reason
for the opposites to exist at all. Passion seeks to tear down the
borders of the ego and to absorb “F* and “thou’' in one another.
But it is not they which become a unit: rather, a new unit
emerges, the child. The parents’ nearness, which they can never
attain to the extreme extent they desire but which always must
remain a distance; and, on the other hand, their distance, which
nevertheless to an infinite degree approaches their becoming-
one — this is the peculiar dualistic condition in the form of which
what has become, the child, stands between his creators. Their
varying moods now let one of these two elements play its role,
now the other. Therefore, cold, intrinsically alienated spouses
do not wish a child: it might unify them; and this unifying func-
tion would contrast the more effectively, but the less desirably,
with the parents' overwhelming estrangement. Yet sometimes
it is precisely the very passionate and intimate husband and
wife who do not wish a child: it would separate them; the meta-

Monogamous Marriage 129

physical oneness into which they want to fuse alone with one
another would be taken out of their hands and would confront
them as a distinct, third element, a physical unit, that mediates
between them. But to those who seek immediate unity, media-
tion must appear as separation. Although a bridge connects two
banks, it also makes the distance between them measurable; and
where mediation is superfluous, it is worse than superfluous.

Nevertheless, monogamous marriage does not seem to have
the essential sociological character of the dyad, namely, absence
of a super-personal unit. For, the common experience of bad
marriages between excellent persons and of good marriages be-
tween dubious ones, suggests that marriage, however much it
depends on each of the spouses, may yet have a character not
coinciding with either of them. Each of the two, for instance, may
suffer from confusions, difficulties, and shortcomings, but man-
ages to localize them in himself or herself, as it were, while con-
tributing only the best and purest elements to the marital rela-
tion, which thus is kept free from personal defects. If this is the
case, the defect may still be considered the personal affair of the
spouse. And yet we have the feeling that marriage is something
super-personal, something which is valuable and sacred in itself,
and which lies beyond whatever un-sacredness each of its ele-
ments may possess. It is a relationship within which either of the
two feels and behaves only with respect to the other. His or her
characteristics, without (of course) ceasing to be such, neverthe-
less receive a coloration, status, and significance that are different
from what they would be if they were completely absorbed by
the ego. For the consciousness of each of them, their relationship
may thus become crystallized as an entity outside of them, an
entity which is more and better (or worse, for that matter) than
he or she is, toward which he has obligations and from which he
receives good or fateful gifts, as if from some objective being.

This rise of the group unit from its structure, which consists
of the mere and ‘‘thou,’’ is facilitated, in the case of marriage,
by two circumstances. First, there is its incomparable closeness.
The fact that two fundamentally different beings, man and
woman, form such a close union; that the egoism of each is so
thoroughly suspended, not only in favor of the other, but also
in favor of the general relationship, including the interests and

130 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

the honor of the family and, above all, the children — this is
really a miraculous fact. It is grounded in bases of the ego which
rationalistically are inexplicable and which lie beyond its con-
sciousness. It is also expressed in the distinction between the
unit and its elements. That each of them feels the relation to be
something with its own life-forces, merely indicates that it is
incommensurable with the personal, self-contained ego, as we
usually conceive it.

The second point is that this idea is further corroborated by
the super-individual character of marriage forms, which are
socially regulated and historically transmitted. It is impossible
to decide whether the immeasurable differences in the nature
and value of individual marriages are larger or smaller than
are those among individuals. But no matter how great either of
the differences may be, no couple has by itself invented the form
of marriage. Its various forms are valid, rather, within given cul-
ture areas, as relatively fixed forms. In their formal nature, they
are not subject to the arbitrary shadings and fates of individuals.
If we look at the history of marriage, we are struck, for instance,
by the important, always traditional role that is played by third
persons during courtship, in negotiations regarding dowry, and
in the wedding ceremonies proper. They are not always rela-
tives: they include the priest who seals the marital union. This
un-individualized initiation of marriage forcefully symbolizes
its sociologically incomparable structure: in regard to its content
and interest, as well as to its formal organization, this most per-
sonal relation of all is taken over and directed by entirely super-
personal, historical-social authority. This inclusion of traditional
elements profoundly contrasts marriage with friendship and
similar relations, in which individual freedom is permitted much
more play. Marriage, essentially, allows only acceptance or re-
jection, but not modification. It thus evidently favors the feeling
of an objective form, of a super-personal unit. Although each of
the two spouses is confronted by only the other, at least partially
he also feels as he does when confronted by a collectivity; as the
mere bearer of a super-individual structure whose nature and
norms are independent of him, although he is an organic part of
it.

Modern culture seems more and more to individualize the

Monogamous Marriage 131

character of the given marriage, but at the same time to leave
untouched, even in some respects to emphasize, its super-individ-
uality, which is the core of its sociological form. At first glance,
it may appear as if the great number of marriage forms found
in half-cultures and past high-cultures (some of them based on
the choice by the parties to the contract, some on their specific
social positions), reflected an individualization that is at the
service of the individual marriage. Actually, the reverse is true.
Each of these types is profoundly un-individual and socially
pre-determined; and being more minutely articulated, it is
much narrower and tighter than is a very general and pervasive
marriage form, whose more abstract character is bound to leave
greater play to personal differentiation.

Here we encounter a very general sociological uniformity. If
the general is socially defined; if, that is, all relevant situations
are stamped by a pervasive social form, a much greater freedom
of individual behavior and creativity prevails than is true when
social norms are crystallized in a variety of specific forms, while
seemingly paying attention to individual conditions and needs.
In the latter case, there is much more interference with what is
properly individual: the freedom of differentiation is greater
when the lack ot freedom concerns very general and pervasive
features.® The uniform character of the modern marriage form
thus certainly leaves more room for individual articulations
than do a larger number of socially pre-determined forms. On
the other hand, it is true that its generality, which suffers no ex-
ception, greatly increases the character of objectivity and au-
tonomous validity that it has in comparison with individual
modifications in which we are interested here.^®

9 These correlations are treated in detail in the last chapter. [“The Enlarge-
ment of the Group and the Development of Individuality”; not contained in this
volume.]

10 The peculiar combination of subjective and objective, personal and super-
personal or general elements in marriage is involved in the very process that forms
its basis — physiological pairing. It alone is common to all historically known forms
of marriage, while perhaps no other characteristic can be found without excep-
tions. On the one hand, sexual intercourse is the most intimate and personal
process, but on the other hand, it is absolutely general, absorbing the very per-
sonality in the service of the species and in the universal organic claim of nature.
The psychological secret of this act lies in its double character of being both wholly
personal and wholly impersonal. It explains why it is precisely this act that could
become the basis of the marital relation which, at a higher sociological stage, re-

132 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

Something sociologically similar can be seen in the dyad of
business partners. Although the formation and operation of the
business rests, exclusively perhaps, on the cooperation of these
two personalities, nevertheless the subject matter of the coopera-
tion, the business or firm, is an objective structure. Each of the
two has rights and duties toward it that in many respects are not
different from those of any third party. And yet this fact here has
another sociological significance than in the case of marriage.
Because of the objective character of the economic system, busi-
ness is intrinsically separate from the person of the owner,
whether he be one or two, or more persons. The interaction
among the participants has its purpose outside itself, while in
marriage it has it within it. In business, the relationship serves
as the means for obtaining certain objective results; in marriage,
all objective elements are really nothing but means for the sub-
jective relation. It is all the more remarkable that the psychologi-
cal objectivity and autonomy of the group structure, which is not
so essential to other dyads, does exist in marriage, along with
immediate subjectivity.

peats the same duality. But it is in the very relation between marriage and sex
behavior that we find a most peculiar formal complication. For, however impossible
it is to give a positive definition of marriage in view of the historical heterogeneity
of marriage types, it can certainly be said which relation between man and woman
is not marriage — the purely sexual relation. Whatever marriage is, it is always
and everywhere more than sexual intercourse. However divergent the directions
may be in which marriage transcends sexual intercourse, the fact that it transcends
it at all makes marriage what it is. Here is, sociologically speaking, an almost
unique phenomenon: the very point that all marriage forms have in common is the
one which they have to transcend in order to result in marriage. Elsewhere there
seem to be only very distant analogies. Thus all artists, no matter how heterogene-
ous their stylistic and imaginative tendencies may be, must know natural phenom-
ena very minutely, not in order to stay within them, but in order to fulfill their
specific artistic task by going beyond them. In a similar way, all historical and indi-
vidual variations of gastronomic culture must satisfy relevant physiological needs,
but again not to stop there, but to transcend this merely general need satisfaction
by means of the most diverse stimuli. But among sociological formations, marriage
seems to be the only one, or at least the purest, of this type. Here all cases of a
given social form really contain only one common element; but this element is not
sufficient to realize the form. This form emerges, rather, only when something else,
something inevitably individual, which is different from case to case, is added to
the general.

Delegation Responsibilities to the Group 133

§ 8 . Delegation of Duties and Responsibilities
to the Group

Yet there is one constellation of very great sociological im-
portance which is absent in all dyads, while, in principle at
least, it characterizes all larger groups: the delegation of duties
and responsibilities to the impersonal group structure. In fact,
this delegation frequently, though unfavorably, characterizes
social life in general. It may occur in two directions. Any col-
lectivity which is more than a mere aggregation of certain indi-
viduals has indefinite boundaries and powers. This indefinite-
ness easily tempts one to expect from it all kinds of performances
which really are the business of the individual members. They
are turned over to society. With the same psychological tendency
we very often turn them over to our own future, whose nebulous
possibilities have room for everything or, as if by spontaneously
growing forces, take care of everything which at the moment we
do not like to take on ourselves. In these cases, the transparent,
but for this very reason clearly limited, power of the individual
is always distinguished from the somewhat mystical power of
the collectivity. One therefore easily expects of the collectivity
not only what one cannot achieve, but also what one does not
care to achieve — and this with the feeling of the perfect legiti-
macy of the transfer. One of the best students of the United
States explains many imperfections and obstacles of the Ameri-
can state machinery in terms of the belief in the power of public
opinion. The individual, he tells us, is confident that the col-
lectivity will after all find and do what is right, and thus he easily
loses his initiative in matters of public interest. And this may
result in the positive phenomenon which the same author de-
scribes as follows: ‘‘The longer public opinion has ruled, the
more absolute is the authority of the majority likely to become,
the less likely are energetic minorities to arise, the more are
politicians likely to occupy themselves, not in forming opinion,
but in discovering and hastening to obey it.'*

But group membership is, for the individual, quite as dan-
gerous in terms of omission as of commission. Here the reference
is not only to heightened impulsiveness and elimination of
moral restraint which are shown by the individual in a crowd

134 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

and which lead to mass crimes where even legal responsibility
becomes a matter of dispute. In addition, the group interest
(true or ostensible) entitles, or even obliges, the individual to
commit acts for which, as an individual, he does not care to be
responsible. Economic groups make shamelessly egoistical de-
mands, officialdoms admit of crying abuses, both political and
scientific associations practice outrageous acts of suppressing
individual rights. If the individual had to answer for all these
acts personally, he would find them impossible — at the very
least, they would make him blush. But as a group member, he is
anonymous. He feels himself protected if not concealed (so to
speak) by the group, whose interests, at least formally, he believes
himself to represent. He therefore commits these acts with the
best of conscience. There are few cases in which the distance
between the social unit and its elements is as great as it is here,
where this distance is obvious and effective to a degree that almost
degenerates into caricature.

This lowering of the practical personality values often en-
tailed by group membership, had to be indicated because its
absence characterizes the dyad. Since in this case each element has
only one other individual, rather than more, who might form
a higher unit with him, the dependence of the whole on him is
perfectly clear, and thus his co-responsibility for all collective
actions. He can, of course (and it happens often enough), pass
responsibilities on to his partner. But this partner can reject
them much more immediately and decisively than it is fre-
quently possible for an anonymous whole: the whole lacks energy
derived from personal interest, or requisite and legitimate repre-
sentation. Neither of the two members can hide what he has
done behind the group, nor hold the group responsible for what
he has failed to do. Here the forces with which the group sur-
passes the individual — indefinitely and partially, to be sure, but
yet quite perceptibly — cannot compensate for individual inade-
quacies, as they can in larger groups. There are many respects
in which two united individuals accomplish more than two
isolated individuals. Nevertheless, the decisive characteristic of
the dyad is that each of the two must actually accomplish some-
thing, and that in case of failure only the other remains — not
a super-individual force, as prevails in a group even of three.

The Expansion of the Dyad 135

The significance of this characteristic, however, is by no means
only negative (referring, that is, to what it excludes). On the con-
trary, it also makes for a close and highly specific coloration of
the dyadic relationship. Precisely the fact that each of the two
knows that he can depend only upon the other and on nobody
else, gives the dyad a special consecration — as is seen in marriage
and friendship, but also in more external associations, including
political ones, that consist of two groups. In respect to its socio-
logical destiny and in regard to any other destiny that depends
on it, the dyadic element is much more frequently confronted
with All or Nothing than is the member of the larger group.

§ 9 . The Expansion of the Dyad

[a] THE TRIAD VS. THE DYAD

This peculiar closeness between two is most clearly revealed
if the dyad is contrasted with the triad. For among three ele-
ments, each one operates as an intermediary between the other
two, exhibiting the twofold function of such an organ, which
is to unite and to separate. Where three elements. A, B, C, con-
stitute a group, there is, in addition to the direct relationship
between A and for instance, their indirect one, which is de-
rived from their common relation to C. The fact that two ele-
ments are each connected not only by a straight line — the short-
est — but also by a broken line, as it were, is an enrichment from
a formal-sociological standpoint. Points that cannot be contacted
by the straight line are connected by the third element, which
offers a different side to each of the other two, and yet fuses these
different sides in the unity of its own personality. Discords be-
tween two parties which they themselves cannot remedy, are
accommodated by the third or by absorption in a comprehensive
whole.

Yet the indirect relation does not only strengthen the direct
one. It may also disturb it. No matter how close a triad may be,
there is always the occasion on which two of the three members
regard the third as an intruder. The reason may be the mere
fact that he shares in certain moods which can unfold in all their

11 Again not SimmeTs term, but again more convenient than "'Verbindung zu
dreien*' (association of three) and the like. — ^Tr.

136 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

intensity and tenderness only when two can meet without dis-
traction: the sensitive union of two is always irritated by the
spectator. It may also be noted how extraordinarily difficult and
rare it is for three people to attain a really uniform mood — ^when
visiting a museum, for instance, or looking at a landscape — and
how much more easily such a mood emerges between two. A
and B may stress and harmoniously feel their m, because the n
which A does not share with B, and the x which B does not share
with A, are at once spontaneously conceded to be individual
prerogatives located, as it were, on another plane. If, however, C
joins the company, who shares n with A and x with B, the result
is that (even under this scheme, which is the one most favorable
to the unity of the whole) harmony of feeling is made completely
impossible. Two may actually be one party, or may stand entirely
beyond any question of party. But it is usual for just such finely
tuned combinations of three at once to result in three parties of
two persons each, and thus to destroy the unequivocal character
of the relations between each two of them.

The sociological structure of the dyad is characterized by
two phenomena that are absent from it. One is the intensification
of relation by a third element, or by a social framework that
transcends both members of the dyad. The other is any disturb-
ance and distraction of pure and immediate reciprocity. In some
cases it is precisely this absence which makes the dyadic relation-
ship more intensive and strong. For, many otherwise undevel-
oped, unifying forces that derive from more remote psychical
reservoirs come to life in the feeling of exclusive dependence
upon one another and of hopelessness that cohesion might
come from anywhere but immediate interaction. Likewise, they
carefully avoid many disturbances and dangers into which confi-
dence in a third party and in the triad itself might lead the two.
This intimacy, which is the tendency of relations between two
persons, is the reason why the 4yad constitutes the chief seat of
jealousy.

The Expansion of the Dyad 137

[b] TWO TYPES OF INDIVIDUALITY AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH
DYADIC AND OTHER RELATIONSHIPS

Dyads, wholes composed of only two participants, presuppose
a greater individualization of their members than larger groups
do (other things being equal). This observation is merely an-
other aspect of the same fundamental sociological constellation.
The essential point is that within a dyad, there can be no ma-
jority which could outvote the individual. This majority, how-
ever, is made possible by the mere addition of a third member.
But relations which permit the individual to be overruled by
a majority devalue individuality. What is more, if the relations
in question are of a voluntary character, persons of a very de-
cided individuality do not care to enter them.

At this juncture, it is important to distinguish a decided
individuality from a strong individuality, two concepts that are
very often confused. Certain extremely individualized persons
and collectivities do not have the strength to preserve their
individualization in the face of suppressive or leveling forces.
The strong personality, on the other hand, usually intensifies
its formation precisely through opposition, through the fight
for its particular .character and against all temptation to blend
and intermix. The decided, merely qualitative individuality
avoids groups in which it might find itself confronted by a
majority. It is rather pre-destined, almost, for dyadic relation-
ships, because its differentiation and its vulnerability make it
dependent on supplementation by another personality. The
first type — the more intensive individuality — prefers, on the
other hand, to confront a plurality against whose quantitative
superiority it can test its own, dynamic superiority. This prefer-
ence is justified even for almost technical reasons: Napoleon's
Consulate of Three was decidedly more convenient for him
than a group of two, for he had to win over only one colleague
(which is very easy for the strongest among three) in order to
dominate, in a perfectly legal form, the other, that is, actually,
both other colleagues.

In general, it may be said that the dyad does two things in
comparison with groups of more members. On the one hand, it
favors a relatively greater individuality of the members. On the

138 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

other hand, it presupposes that the group form does not lower
individual particularity to an average level. Now, women are
the less individualized sex; variation of individual women from
the general class type is less great than is true, in general, of
men. This explains the very widespread opinion that, ordinarily,
women are less susceptible to friendship than men. For, friend-
ship is a relation entirely based on the individualities of its
elements, more so perhaps even than marriage: because of its
traditional forms, its social rules, its real interests, marriage
contains many super-individual elements that are independent
of the specific characters of the personalities involved. The funda-
mental differentiation on which marriage is based, as over
against friendship, is in itself not an individual, but a species,
differentiation. It is therefore understandable that real and
lasting friendships are rare at the stage of low personality de-
velopment; and that, on the other hand, the modern, highly
differentiated woman shows a strikingly increased capacity for
friendship and an inclination toward it, both with men and
with women. Individual differentiation here has overwhelmed
species differentiation. We thus see. a correlation emerge be-
tween the most pointed individualization and a relationship
which, at this stage at least, is absolutely limited to the dyad.
This, of course, does not preclude the possibility that the same
person can, at the same time, be engaged in more than one rela-
tion of friendship.

[c] DYADS, TRIADS, AND LARGER GROUPS

Dyads thus have very specific features. This is shown not
only by the fact that the addition of a third person completely
changes them, but also, and even more so, by the common ob-
servation that the further expansion to four or more by no means
correspondingly modifies the group any further. For instance,
a marriage with one child has a character which is completely
different from that of a childless marriage, but it is not sig-
nificantly different from a marriage with two or more children.
To be sure, the difference resulting from the advent of the
second child is again much more considerable than is that which
results from the third. But this really follows from the norm

The Expansion of the Dyad 139

mentioned: in many respects, the marriage with one child is a
relation consisting of two elements — on the one hand, the
parental unit, and on the other, the child. The second child
is not only a fourth member of a relation but, sociologically
speaking, also a third, with the peculiar effects of the third
member. For, as soon as infancy has passed, it is much more
often the parents who form a functional unit within the family
than it is the totality of the children.

In an analogous way, in regard to marriage forms, the de-
cisive difference is between monogamy and bigamy, whereas
the third or twentieth wife is relatively unimportant for the
marriage structure. The transition to a second wife is more
consequential, at least in one sense, than is that to an even
larger number. For it is precisely the duality of wives that can
give rise to the sharpest conflicts and deepest disturbances in
the husband’s life, while they do not arise in the case of a
greater plurality. The reason is that a larger number than two
entails a de-classing and de-individualizing of the wives, a de-
cisive reduction of the relationship to its sensuous basis (since
a more intellectual relationship also is always more individ-
ualized). In general, therefore, the husband’s deeper disturb-
ances that characteristically and exclusively flow from a double
relationship cannot come up.

This same fundamental idea can also be seen in Voltaire’s
statement about the political usefulness of religious anarchy.
It says that, within a state, two rivaling sects inevitably produce
unrests and difficulties which can never result from two hun-
dred. The significance that the dualism of one element has in
a group of several members is, of course, no less specific and
decisive when this group serves the maintenance, rather than
the disturbance, of the total collectivity of which it is a part.
Thus it has been suggested that the collegiate relationship of
the two Roman Consuls was perhaps a more effective obstacle
to monarchical aspirations than the Athenian system of nine
highest officials. It is the same dualistic tension which works
now in a conservative, now in a destructive manner, depending
on the other circumstances that characterize the total group.
The decisive point is that this total group completely changes
its sociological character as soon as the function in question

140 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

is exerted, rather than by two, either by one person or by more
than two. Important colleges are often composed of two mem-
bers, like the Roman Consuls: there are the two kings of the
Spartans, whose continuous frictions are explicitly stressed as
assuring the continuation of the state; the two highest war chiefs
of the Iroquois; the two civic heads of medieval Augsburg,
where the aspiration toward a single mayoralty stood under a
severe penalty. The peculiar tensions between the dualistic ele-
ments of a larger structure guarantee the status quo function
of the dyad: in the examples given, the fusion into unity could
easily have resulted in the predominance of an individual, and
the expansion into a plurality, in an oligarchical clique.

This discussion has already shown the general significance
of dualism and the comparable insignificance of its numerical
increase. In concluding this analysis, I will mention two par-
ticular but sociologically highly significant facts. France’s polit-
ical position in Europe was at once changed profoundly as soon
as the country entered into a closer relationship with Russia.
A third or fourth ally would not have produced any significant
modification once this decisive modification had occurred. In
general, the contents of human life differ very considerably
according to whether the first step is the most difficult and de-
cisive step and all later ones are of a comparatively secondary
importance, or whether the first step itself proves nothing, while
only later and more outspoken steps realize the turn of events
that was merely foreshadowed in the beginning. The numerical
aspects of sociation provide numerous illustrations of either
case, as will become increasingly clear later on. For a state
whose isolation entails the loss of political prestige, the existence
of any one alliance whatever is decisive. By contrast, certain
economic or military advantages perhaps develop only in a num-
ber of alliances of which none may be absent if their success
is to be guaranteed. Obviously, between these two types there
is the intermediate one wherein the particular character and
success of the relationship is directly correlated with the number
of elements, as is usually true in the aggregation of large masses.
The second type is suggested by the experience that relations
of command and assistance radically change their character if,
instead of one servant, assistant, or other subordinate, there are

The Expansion of the Dyad 141

two. Aside from the question of cost, housewives sometimes
prefer to get along with one servant because of the special diffi-
culties that are involved if there are several. Because of a natural
need for attachment, one servant tries to approach and enter
the employer’s personal sphere and interest. But the same need
for attachment may lead him to take a stand against the em-
ployer by joining a second servant, for each of the two has support
in the other. Feelings of specific social status, with their latent
or more conscious opposition against the master, become effec-
tive only where there are two servants, because they emerge as
a feature which they have in common.

In short, the sociological situation between the superordi-
nate and the subordinate is completely changed as soon as a
third element is added. Party formation is suggested instead
of solidarity; that which separates servant and master is stressed
instead of what binds them, because now common features are
sought in the comrade and, of course, are found in their common
contrast to the superordinate of them both. But this transforma-
tion of a numerical into a qualitative difference is no less funda-
mental if viewed from the master’s standpoint. It is easier to
keep two rather than one at a desired distance; in their jealousy
and competition the master has a tool for keeping them down
and making them obedient, while there is no equivalent tool
in the case of one servant. This is expressed, in formally the same
sense, in an old proverb: *‘He who has one child is his slave;
he who has more is their master.” It is seen in all these cases
that the triad is a structure completely different from the dyad
but not, on the other hand, specifically distinguished from
groups of four or more members.

Before discussing particular types of triads, we must em-
phasize the variety of group characteristics that results from
the subdivision of the group into two or into three chief parties.
Periods of excitement generally place the whole of public life
under the slogan, “Who is not for me is against me.” The conse-
quence of this is a division of elements into two parties. All
interests, convictions, and impulses which put us into a positive
or negative relation with others at all, are distinguished from
one another by the question of how aptly this alternative applies
to them. They may be arranged along a continuum. At the one

142 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

pole is the radical exclusion of all mediation and impartiality;
at the other, tolerance of the opponent's standpoint as legitimate
as one's own. Between these extremes lies a whole range of stand-
points that concur more or less with one’s own position. A point
on the continuum is occupied by every decision concerning
immediate or remote groups that we have contact with; by every
decision defining our positions within these groups; by every
decision involving intimate or superficial cooperation, benevo-
lence, or toleration, our increased prestige, or a danger to us.
Every decision traces an ideal line around us. This line may
definitely include or exclude everybody else; or it may have
gaps where the question of inclusion and exclusion does not
even arise; or it may permit mere contact, or only a partial in-
clusion and a partial exclusion. Whether the question of for-
or-against-me is raised, and if so how emphatically, is determined
not only by the logical rigor of the content of this question, nor
only by the passion with which this content is insisted upon,
but also by my relation to my social circle. The closer and more
solidary this relation is; the more difficult it is for the individual
to live with others that are not in complete harmony with him;
and the more some ideal claim unites their totality, the more
uncompromising is the question for each of them. The radicalism
with which Jesus formulated this very decision derives from
an infinitely strong feeling of the fundamental unity among
all those who had received his message. In regard to it, there
can be not only acceptance or rejection but what is more, only
acceptance or outright fight against it. This fact is the strongest
expression of the unconditional unity of all who belong to Jesus
and of the unconditional exclusion of all who do not. For, the
fight against the message, the being-against-me, is still an im-
portant relation, an inner, though perverted, unity; and this is
stronger than any indifferent standing-by or half-hearted fence
straddling.

[d] THE FORMAL RADICALISM OF THE MASS

Thus, this fundamental sociological feeling leads to a split
of the whole complex of elements into two parties. On the other
hand, however, there are cases that show no such passionate

The Expansion of the Dyad 14S

feeling which forces everybody into a positive relation, of ac-
ceptance or fight, to the new idea or challenge. In these cases,
every group that is part of the whole is rather essentially con-
tent with its existence as a part-group, and does not seriously
request inclusion into the totality. If this is the situation, there
is opportunity for a plurality of party formations, for tolerance,
for mediating parties, for a whole range of subtly graded modi-
fications. Epochs in which large masses are in movement facili-
tate party dualism, exclude indifference, and reduce the influ-
ence of middle parties. This fact becomes understandable on the
basis of the radicalism which appeared to us as the character
of mass movements. The simplicity of the ideas by which these
movements are guided, imposes the alternative between absolute
‘"yes” and “no.”

The radicalism of mass movements does not prevent, how-
ever, a complete shift from one extreme to the other. In fact,
it is not difficult to understand that such a shift occurs, and
for relatively slight reasons. Suppose a stimulus X correspond-
ing to the mood a is exerted upon a mass of people who are
present in the same place. In this mass there is a number of
individuals, perhaps one only, whose temperament and natural
passion tend toward a. This individual is vividly stimulated by
X, which reinforces his own leanings. Understandably enough,
this person takes leadership in the mass, which is in some measure
already disposed toward and which follows the mood of the
leader whose temperament exaggerates the stimulus. By con-
trast, the individuals whose natures predispose them toward
the opposite of keep quiet in the face of X. If now there
appears a Y which justifies the adherents of a must be silent,
and the movement repeats, with the same exaggeration, in the
direction of b. This exaggeration derives from two facts. One
is that in every mass there are individuals whose temper leans
toward the extreme development of whatever mood is stimulated.
The other is that these individuals, because at the moment

12 Throughout history, democratic tendencies, insofar as they direct the great
mass movements, tend toward simple measures, laws, and principles. All complex
practices that reject many-sided concerns and pay attention to heterogeneous
standpoints, are antipathetic to democracy. Aristocracy, inversely, usually abhors
general and coercive principles and tries to do justice to the peculiarities of indi-
vidual elements, personal, local, and objective.

144 The Isolated Individual and the Dyad

they are strongest and most emphatic, pull the mass in the direc-
tion of their own mood, whereas the individuals who are dis-
posed in the opposite direction remain passive, because the
trend of the moment gives them and the whole no opportunity
toward their own direction. To put the matter in axiomatic
form: it is the contentually variable, formal radicalism of the
mass which is the reason why no middle line results from the
members of the mass with their dispositions toward diflEerent
directions. It is the reason why, on the contrary, the momentary
predominance of one direction usually silences, at once and
completely, the representatives of all others, instead of allowing
them to co'determine the mass action in proportion to their
relative strengths.

This also explains why once a given direction has been
formulated, there is no obstacle in the way of its reaching its
extreme. In the face of fundamental practical problems, there
are as a rule only two simple positions, however many mixed
and mediating ones there may be. In a similar way, every lively
movement within a group — from the family through the whole
variety of organizations based on common interests, including
political groups — generally results in the differentiation into
a clear-cut dualism. If the rate of speed at which interests de-
velop and general stages of development follow one another is
great, we always find that decisions and differentiations are
more definitive than they are in slower periods: mediation re-
quires time and leisure. In quiet and stagnant epochs, vital
questions are not stirred up but remain concealed under the
regular interests of the day. Such epochs easily lead to imper-
ceptible transitions and allow an indifferentism of the individual
which a more vivid current would force into the opposition
between the chief parties. The typical difference in sociological
constellation, thus, always remains that of two, as over against
three, chief parties. A number of parties can share in different
degrees in the function of the third, which is to mediate between
two extremes. The existence of these degrees is, as it were, only
an expansion or refinement in the technical execution of the
principle of mediation; the principle itself changes the configura-
tion radically, and always emerges and operates when a third
party is added.

Chapter 4

The Triad

§ 1 . The Sociological Significance of the
Third Element

WHAT HAS BEEN SAID INDI-

cates to a great extent the role of the third element, as well
as the configurations that operate among three social elements.
The dyad represents both the first social synthesis and unifica-
tion, and the first separation and antithesis. The appearance of
the third party indicates transition, conciliation, and abandon-
ment of absolute contrast (although, on occasion, it introduces
contrast). The triad as such seems to me to result in three kinds
of typical group formations. All of them are impossible if there
are only two elements; and, on the other hand, if there are more
than three, they are either equally impossible or only expand
in quantity but do not change their formal type.

§ 2 . The Non-Partisan and the Mediator

It is sociologically very significant that isolated elements are
unified by their common relation to a phenomenon which lies
outside of them. This applies as much to the alliance between
states for the purpose of defense against a common enemy as to
the “invisible church” which unifies all faithful in their equal
relation to the one God. The group-forming, mediating function
of a third element will be discussed in a later context. In the
cases under examination now, the third element is at such a
distance from the other two that there exist no properly socio-
logical interactions which concern all three elements alike.
Rather, there are configurations of two. In the center of socio-
logical attention, there is either the relation between the two

145

146 The Triad

joining elements, the relation between them as a unit and the
center of interest that confronts them. At the moment, however,
we are concerned with three elements which are so closely related
or so closely approach one another that they form a group,
permanent or momentary.

In the most significant of all dyads, monogamous marriage,
the child or children, as the third element, often has the func-
tion of holding the whole together. Among many ‘‘nature
peoples,*' only childbirth makes marriage perfect or insoluble.
And certainly one of the reasons why developing culture makes
marriages deeper and closer is that children become independent
relatively late and therefore need longer care. Perfection of
marriage through childbirth rests, of course, on the value which
the child has for the husband, and on his inclination, sanctioned
by law and custom, to expel a childless wife. But the actual
result of the third element, the child, is that it alone really closes
the circle by tying the parents to one another. This can occur
in two forms. The existence of the third element may directly
start or strengthen the union of the two, as for instance, when
the birth of a child increases the spouses’ mutual love, or at
least the husband’s for his wife. Or the relation of each of the
spouses to the child may produce a new and indirect bond be-
tween them. In general, the common preoccupations of a mar-
ried couple with the child reveal that their union passes through
the child, as it were; the union often consists of sympathies which
could not exist without such a point of mediation. This emer-
gence of the inner socialization of three elements, which the
two elements by themselves do not desire, is the reason for a
phenomenon mentioned earlier, namely, the tendency of un-
happily married couples not to wish children. They instinctively
feel that the child would close a circle within which they would
be nearer one another, not only externally but also in their
deeper psychological layers, than they are inclined to be.

When the third element functions as a non-partisan, we
have a different variety of mediation. The non-partisan either
produces the concord of two colliding parties, whereby he with-
draws after making the effort of creating direct contact between
the unconnected or quarreling elements; or he functions as an
arbiter who balances, as it were, their contradictory claims

The Non-Partisan and the Mediator 147

against one another and eliminates what is incompatible in
them. Differences between labor and management, especially
in England, have developed both forms of unification. There
are boards of conciliation where the parties negotiate their con-
flicts under the presidency of a non-partisan. The mediator, of
course, can achieve reconciliation in this form only if each party
believes that the proportion between the reasons for the hos-
tility, in short, the objective situation justifies the reconciliation
and makes peace advantageous. The very great opportunity that
non-partisan mediation has to produce this belief lies not only
in the obvious elimination of misunderstandings or in appeals
to good will, etc. It may also be analyzed as follows. The non-
partisan shows each party the claims and arguments of the other;
they thus lose the tone of subjective passion which usually
provokes the same tone on the part of the adversary. What is
so often regrettable here appears as something wholesome,
namely, that the feeling which accompanies a psychological con-
tent when one individual has it, usually weakens greatly when
it is transferred to a second. This fact explains why recommen-
dations and testimonies that have to pass several mediating
persons before reaching the deciding individual, are so often
ineffective, even jf their objective content arrives at its destina-
tion without any change. In the course of these transfers, affec-
tive imponderables get lost; and these not only supplement
insufficient objective qualifications, but, in practice, they alone
cause sufficient ones to be acted upon.

Here we have a phenomenon which is very significant for
the development of purely psychological influences. A third
mediating social element deprives conflicting claims of their
affective qualities because it neutrally formulates and presents
these claims to the two parties involved. Thus this circle that
is fatal to all reconciliation is avoided: the vehemence of the
one no longer provokes that of the other, which in turn inten-
sifies that of the first, and so forth, until the whole relationship
breaks down. Furthermore, because of the non-partisan, each
party to the conflict not only listens to more objective matters
but is also forced to put the issue in more objective terms than
it would if it confronted the other without mediation. For now
it is important for each to win over even the mediator. This,

148 The Triad

however, can be hoped for only on purely objective grounds,
because the mediator is not the arbitrator, but only guides the
process of coming to terms; because, in other words, he must
always keep out of any decision — whereas the arbitrator ends
up by taking sides. Within the realm of sociological techniques,
there is nothing that serves the reconciliation of conflicting
parties so effectively as does objectivity, that is, the attempt at
limiting all complaints and requests to their objective contents.
Philosophically speaking, the conflict is reduced to the objective
spirit of each partial standpoint, so that the personalities in-
volved appear as the mere vehicles of objective conditions. In
case of conflict, the personal form in which objective contents
become subjectively alive must pay for its warmth, color, and
depth of feeling with the sharpness of the antagonism that it
engenders. The diminution of this personal tone is the con-
dition under which the understanding and reconciliation of the
adversaries can be attained, particularly because it is only under
this condition that each of the two parties actually realizes what
the other must insist upon. To put it psychologically, antag-
onism of the will is reduced to intellectual antagonism. Reason
is everywhere the principle of understanding; on its basis can
come together what on that of feeling and ultimate decision
of the will is irreconcilably in conflict. It is the function of the
mediator to bring this reduction about, to represent it, as it were,
in himself; or to form a transformation point where, no matter
in what form the conflict enters from one side, it is transmitted
to the other only in an objective form; a point where all is re-
tained which would merely intensify the conflict in the absence
of mediation.

It is important for the analysis of social life to realize clearly
that the constellation thus characterized constantly emerges in
all groups of more than two elements. To be sure, the mediator
may not be specifically chosen, nor be known or designated as
such. But the triad here serves merely as a type or scheme; ulti-
mately all cases of mediation can be reduced to this form. From
the conversation among three persons that lasts only an hour,
to the permanent family of three, there is no triad in which a
dissent between any two elements does not occur from time to
time — a dissent of a more harmless or more pointed, more

The Non-Partisan and the Mediator 149

momentary or more lasting, more theoretical or more practical
nature — and in which the third member does not play a mediat-
ing role. This happens innumerable times in a very rudimentary
and inarticulate manner, mixed with other actions and interac-
tions, from which the purely mediating function cannot be
isolated. Such mediations do not even have to be performed
by means of words. A gesture, a way of listening, the mood that
radiates from a particular person, are enough to change the
difference between two individuals so that they can seek under-
standing, are enough to make them feel their essential common-
ness which is concealed under their acutely differing opinions,
and to bring this divergence into the shape in which it can be
ironed out the most easily. The situation does not have to involve
a real conflict or fight. It is rather the thousand insignificant
differences of opinion, the allusions to an antagonism of per-
sonalities, the emergence of quite momentary contrasts of in-
terest or feeling, which continuously color the fluctuating forms
of all living together; and this social life is constantly determined
in its course by the presence of the third person, who almost
inevitably exercises the function of mediation. This function
makes the round among the three elements, since the ebb and
flow of social life realizes the form of conflict in every possible
combination of two members.

The non-partisanship that is required for mediation has one
of two presuppositions. The third element is non-partisan either
if he stands above the contrasting interests and opinions and is
actually not concerned with them, or if he is equally concerned
with both. The first case is the simpler of the two and involves
fewest complications. In conflicts between English laborers and
entrepreneurs, for instance, the non-partisan called in could be
neither a laborer nor an entrepreneur. It is notable how de-
cisively the separation of objective from personal elements in
the conflict (mentioned earlier) is realized here. The idea is
that the non-partisan is not attached by personal interest to the
objective aspects of either party position. Rather, both come to
be weighed by him as by a pure, impersonal intellect; without
touching the subjective sphere. But the mediator must be sub-
jectively interested in the persons or groups themselves who
exemplify the contents of the quarrel which to him are merely

150 The Triad

theoretical, since otherwise he would not take over his function.
It is, therefore, as if subjective interest set in motion a purely
objective mechanism. It is the fusion of personal distance from
the objective significance of the quarrel with personal interest
in its subjective significance which characterizes the non-partisan
position. This position is the more perfect, the more distinctly
each of these two elements is developed and the more har-
moniously, in its very differentiation, each cooperates with the
other.

The situation becomes more complicated when the non-
partisan owes his position, not to his neutrality, but to his equal
participation in the interests in conflict. This case is frequent
when a given individual belongs to two different interest groups,
one local, and the other objective, especially occupational. In
earlier times, bishops could sometimes intervene between the
secular ruler of their diocese and the pope. The administrator
who is thoroughly familiar with the special interests of his dis-
trict, will be the most suitable mediator in the case of a collision
between these special interests and the general interests of the
state which employs him. The measure of the combination be-
tween impartiality and interest which is favorable to the media-
tion between two locally separate groups, is often found in
persons that come from one of these groups but live with the
other. The difficulty of positions of this kind in which the
mediator may find himself, usually derives from the fact that
his equal interests in both parties, that is, his inner equilibrium,
cannot be definitely ascertained and is, in fact, doubted often
enough by both parties.

Yet an even more difficult and, indeed, often tragic situation
occurs when the third is tied to the two parties, not by specific
interests, but by his total personality; and this situation is ex-
treme when the whole matter of the conflict cannot be clearly
objectified, and its objective aspect is really only a pretext or
opportunity for deeper personal irreconcilabilities to manifest
themselves. In such a case, the third, whom love or duty, fate
or habit have made equally intimate with both, can be crushed
by the conflict — ^much more so than if he himself took sides. The
danger is increased because the balance of his interests, which
does not lean in either direction, usually does not lead to sue-

The Non-Partisan and the Mediator 151

cessful mediation, since reduction to a merely objective contrast
fails. This is the type instanced by a great many family conflicts.
The mediator, whose equal distance to both conflicting parties
assures his impartiality, can accommodate both with relative
ease. But the person who is impartial because he is equally close
to the two, will find this much more difficult and will personally
get into the most painful dualism of feelings. Where the me-
diator is chosen, therefore, the equally uninterested will be pre-
ferred (other things being equal) to the equally interested.
Medieval Italian cities, for instance, often obtained their judges
from the outside in order to be sure that they were not prejudiced
by inner party frictions.

This suggests the second form of accommodation by means
of an impartial third element, namely, arbitration. As long as
the third properly operates as a mediator, the final termination
of the conflict lies exclusively in the hands of the parties them-
selves. But when they choose an arbitrator, they relinquish this
final decision. They project, as it were, their will to conciliation,
and this will becomes personified in the arbitrator. He thus
gains a special impressiveness and power over the antagonistic
forces. The voluntary appeal to an arbitrator, to whom they
submit from the beginning, presupposes a greater subjective
confidence in the objectivity of judgment than does any other
form of decision. For, even in the state tribunal, it is only the
action of the complainant that results from confidence in just
decision, since the complainant considers the decision that is
favorable to him the just decision. The defendant, on the other
hand, must enter the suit whether or not he believes in the
impartiality of the judge. But arbitration results only when
both parties to the conflict have this belief. This is the principle
which sharply differentiates mediation from arbitration; and
the more official the act of conciliation, the more punctiliously
is this differentiation observed.

This statement applies to a whole range of conflicts; from
those between capitalist and worker, which I mentioned earlier,
to those of great politics, where the “good services” of a govern-
ment in adjusting a conflict between two others are quite dif-
ferent from the arbitration occasionally requested of it. The
trivialities of daily life, where the typical triad constantly places

152 The Triad

one into a clear or latent, full or partial difference from two
others, offer many intermediary grades between these two forms.
In the inexhaustibly varying relations, the parties' appeal to the
third person, to his voluntarily or even forcibly seized initiative
to conciliate, often gives him a position whose mediating and
arbitrating elements it is impossible to separate. If one wants
to understand the real web of human society with its indescrib-
able dynamics and fullness, the most important thing is to
sharpen one’s eyes for such beginnings and transitions, for forms
of relationship which are merely hinted at and are again sub-
merged, for their embryonic and fragmentary articulations.
Illustrations which exemplify in its purity any one of the con-
cepts denoting these forms, certainly are indispensable sociolog-
ical tools. But their relation to actual social life is like that of the
approximately exact space forms, that are used to illustrate
geometrical propositions, to the immeasurable complexity of
the actual formations of matter.

After all that has been said, it is clear that from an over-all
viewpoint, the existence of the impartial third element serves
the perpetuation of the group. As the representative of the
intellect, he confronts the two conflicting parties, which for the
moment are guided more by will and feeling. He thus, so to
speak, complements them in the production of that psychological
unity which resides in group life. On the one hand, the non-
partisan tempers the passion of the others. On the other hand,
he can carry and direct the very movement of the whole group
if the antagonism of the other two tends to paralyze their forces.
Nevertheless, this success can change into its opposite. We thus
understand why the most intellectually disposed elements of a
group lean particularly toward impartiality: the cool intellect
usually finds lights and shadows in either quarter; its objective
justice does not easily side unconditionally with either. This is
the reason why sometimes the most intelligent individuals do
not have much influence on the decisions in conflicts, although
it would be very desirable that such decisions come from them.
Once the group has to choose between “yes” and “no,” they,
above all others, ought to throw their weight into the balance, for
then the scale will be the more likely to sink in favor of the right
side. If, therefore, impartiality does not serve practical media-

The Non-Partisan and the Mediator 153

tion directly, in its combination with intellectuality it makes
sure that the decision is not left to the more stupid, or at least
more prejudiced, group forces. And in fact, ever since Solon,
we often find disapproval of impartial behavior. In the social
sense, this disapproval is something very healthy: it is based on
a much deeper instinct for the welfare of the whole than on
mere suspicion of cowardice — ^an attack which is frequently
launched against impartiality, though often quite unjustifiably.

Whether impartiality consists in the equal distance or in the
equal closeness that connects the non-partisan and the two con-
flicting parties, it is obvious that it may be mixed with a great
many other relations between him and each of the two others
and their group as a whole. For instance, if he constitutes a
group with the other two but is remote from their conflicts, he
may be drawn into them in the very name of independence from
the parties which already exist. This may greatly serve the unity
and equilibrium of the group, although the equilibrium may be
highly unstable. It was this sociological form in which the third
estate’s participation in state matters occurred in England. Ever
since Henry III, state matters were inextricably dependent on
the cooperation of the great barons who, along with the prelates,
had to grant the monies; and their combination had power, often
superior power, over the king. Nevertheless, instead of the fruit-
ful collaboration between estates and crown, there were
incessant splits, abuses, power shifts, and clashes. Both parties
came to feel that these could be ended only by resort to a third
element which, until then, had been kept out of state matters;
lower vassals, freemen, counties, and cities. Their representatives
were invited to councils; and this was the beginning of the
House of Commons. The third element thus exerted a double
function. First, it helped to make an actuality of government as
the image of the state in its comprehensiveness. Secondly, it did
so as an agency which confronted hitherto existing government
parties objectively, as it were, and thus contributed to the more
harmonious employment of their reciprocally exhausted forces
for the over-all purpose of the state.

154 The Triad

§ 3. The Tertius Gaudens

In the combinations thus far considered, the impartiality of
the third element either served or harmed the group as a whole.
Both the mediator and the arbitrator wish to save the group
unity from the danger of splitting up. But, evidently, the non-
partisan may also use his relatively superior position for purely
egoistic interests. While in the cases discussed, he behaved as
a means to the ends of the group, he may also, inversely, make
the interaction that takes place between the parties and be-
tween himself and them, a means for his own purposes. In the
social life of well consolidated groups, this may happen merely
as one event among others. But often the relation between the
parties and the non-partisan emerges as a new relationship:
elements that have never before formed an interactional unit
may come into conflict; a third non-partisan element, which
before was equally unconnected with either, may spontaneously
seize upon the chances that this quarrel gives him; and thus an
entirely unstable interaction may result which can have an ani-
mation and wealth of forms, for each of the elements engaged
in it, which are out of all proportion to its brief life.

I will only mention two forms of the tertius gaudens in
which the interaction within the triad does not emerge very
distinctly; and here we are interested in its more typical forma-
tions. In these two, the essential characteristic is rather a certain
passivity, either of the two engaged in the conflict or of the
tertius [third element, party, or person]. The advantage of the
tertius may result from the fact that the remaining two hold
each other in check, and he can make a gain which one of the
two would otherwise deny him. The discord here only effectuates
a paralyzation of forces which, if they only could, would strike
against him. The situation thus really suspends interaction
among the three elements, instead of fomenting it, although it
is certainly, nonetheless, of the most distinct consequences for
all of them. The case in which this situation is brought about
on purpose will be discussed in connection with the next type
of configuration among three elements. Meanwhile, the second

18 Literally, “the third who enjoys," that is, the third party which in some
fashion or another draws advantage from the quarrel of two others. — Tr.

The Tertius Gaudens 155

form appears when the tertius gains an advantage only because
action by one of the two conflicting parties brings it about for
its own purposes — tht tertius does not need to take the initiative.
A case in point are the benefits and promotions which a party
bestows upon him, only in order to offend its adversary. Thus,
the English laws for the protection of labor originally derived,
in part at least, from the mere rancor of the Tories against liberal
manufacturers. Various charitable actions that result from com-
petition for popularity also belong here. Strangely enough, it
is a particularly petty and mean attitude that befriends a third
element for the sake of annoying a second: indifference to the
moral autonomy of altruism cannot appear more sharply than
in this exploitation of altruism. And it is doubly significant that
the purpose of annoying one’s adversary can be achieved by
favoring either one’s friend or one’s enemy.

The formations that are more essential here emerge when-
ever the tertius makes his own indirect or direct gain by turning
toward one of the two conflicting parties — but not intellectually
and objectively, like the arbitrator, but practically, supporting
or granting. This general type has two main variants: either two
parties are hostile toward one another and therefore compete
for the favor ota third element; or they compete for the favor
of the third element and therefore are hostile toward one
another. This difference is important particularly for the fur-
ther development of the threefold constellation. For where an
already existing hostility urges each party to seek the favor of
a third, the outcome of this competition — the fact that the third
party joins one of the two, rather than the other — marks the
real beginning of the fight. Inversely, two elements may curry
favor with a third independently of one another. If so, this very
fact may be the reason for their hostility, for their becoming
parties. The eventual granting of the favor is thus the object,
not the means of the conflict and, therefore, usually ends the
quarrel. The decision is made, and further hostilities become
practically pointless.

In both cases, the advantage of impartiality, which was the
tertius' original attitude toward the two, consists in his possi-
bility of making his decision depend on certain conditions.
Where he is denied this possibility, for whatever reason, he

156 The Triad

cannot fully exploit the situation. This applies to one of the
most common cases of the second type, namely, the competition
between two persons of the same sex for the favor of one of
the opposite sex. Here the decision of the third element does
not depend on his or her will in the same sense as does that of
a buyer who is confronted with two competing offers, or that
of a ruler who grants privileges to one of two competing suppli-
cants. The decision, rather, comes from already existing feelings
which cannot be determined by any will, and which therefore
do not even permit the will to be brought into a situation of
choice. In these cases, therefore, we only exceptionally find
offers intended to be decided by choice; and, although we
genuinely have a situation of tertius gaudens, its thorough ex-
ploitation is, in general, not possible.

On the largest scale, the tertius gaudens is represented by
the buying public in an economy with free competition. The
fight among the producers for the buyer makes the buyer almost
completely independent of the individual supplier. He is, how-
ever, completely dependent on their totality; and their coalition
would, in fact, at once invert the relationship. But as it is, the
buyer can base his purchase almost wholly on his appraisal of
quality and price of the merchandise. His position even has the
added advantage that the producers must try to anticipate the
conditions described: they must guess the consumer’s unver-
balized or unconscious wishes, and they must suggest wishes
that do not exist at all, and train him for them. These situations
of tertius gaudens may be arranged along a continuum. At the
one end, perhaps, there is the above-mentioned case of the woman
between two suitors. Here the decision depends on the two
men’s natures, rather than on any of their activities. The chooser,
therefore, usually makes no conditions and thus does not fully
exploit the situation. At the other end, there is the situation
which gives the tertius gaudens his extreme advantage. It is
found in modern market economy with its complete exclusion
of the personal element: here the advantage of the chooser
reaches a point where the parties even relieve him of the maxi-
mum intensification of his own bargaining condition.

Let us come back to the other formation. In its beginning,
a dispute is not related whatever to a third element. But then

The Tertius Gaudens 157

it forces its parties to compete for help from such a third element.
Ordinarily an example is provided by the history of every federa-
tion, whether it be between states or between members of a
family. The very simple, typical course of the process, however,
gains a particular sociological interest through the following
modification. The power the tertius must expend in order to
attain his advantageous position does not have to be great in
comparison with the power of each of the two parties, since the
quantity of his power is determined exclusively by the strength
which each of them has relative to the other. For evidently, the
only important thing is that his superadded power give one
of them superiority. If, therefore, the power quanta are ap-
proximately equal, a minimum accretion is often sufficient de-
finitely to decide in one direction. This explains the frequent
influence of small parliamentary parties: they can never gain
it through their own significance but only because the great
parties keep one another in approximate balance. Wherever
majorities decide, that is, where everything depends on one sin-
gle vote, as it often does, it is possible for entirely insignificant
parties to make the severest conditions for their support. Some-
thing similar may occur in the relations of small to large states
which find themselves in conflict. What alone is important is
that the forces of two antagonistic elements paralyze one another
and thus actually give unlimited power to the intrinsically ex-
tremely weak position of a third element not yet engaged in the
issue. Of course, intrinsically strong third elements profit no
less from such a situation.

Yet within certain formations, as for instance within a highly
developed system of political parties, it is more difficult to realize
this advantage. For it is precisely the great parties that are often
definitely committed, objectively as well as in their relations
toward one another. They do not, therefore, have the freedom
of decision that would give them all the advantages of the tertius
gaudens. It was only because of very special favorable constella-
tions that during the last decades the Center Party has escaped
this limitation in the German parliaments. Its power position is
very much strengthened by the fact that its principles commit
it to only a very small portion of the parliamentary decisions;
in regard to all others, it can freely decide now in one, now in

158 The Triad

another direction. It can pronounce for or against protective
tariffs, for or against legislation favorable to labor, for or against
military demands, without being handicapped by its party
program. In all such cases, therefore, it places itself as tertius
gaudens between the parties, each of which may try to win its
favor. No Agrarian will seek the assistance of the Social Demo-
crats in fighting for a wheat tariff, because he knows that their
party principles oblige them to be against it; and, in his fight
against the tariff, no Liberal will seek their assistance and pay
for it, because he knows that their party line makes them agree
with him, anyway. But both can go to the Center Party whose
non-commitment on this question enables it to make its own
price. On the other hand, an already strong element often attains
the situation of tertius gaudens because it does not have to put
its whole power into effect. For, the advantages of tertius gaudens
accrue to it not only from outright fight, but from the mere
tension and latent antagonism between the other two: the ad-
vantages derive from the mere possibility of deciding in favor
of one or the other, even if the matter does not come to an open
contest.

This very situation was characteristic of English politics at
the beginning of the modern period, after the medieval phase,
to the extent at least, that England no longer sought immediate
possessions and dominions on the continent but always had a
potential power between the continental realms. Already in
the sixteenth century it was said that France and Spain were
the scales of the European balance, but England was the “tongue
or the holder of the balance.’’ The Roman bishops, beginning
with the whole development up to Leo the Great, elaborated
this formal principle with great emphasis by forcing conflicting
parties within the church to give them the role of the decisive
power. Ever since very early times, bishops in dogmatic or other
conflict with other bishops have sought the assistance of their
Roman colleague who, on principle, always took the party of
the petitioner. Thus, nothing was left for others to do but like-
wise to turn to the Roman bishop, in order not to antagonize
him from the start. He came, therefore, to acquire the preroga-
tive and tradition of a decisive tribunal. Here, what might be
called the sociological logic of the situation of three, of which

The Tertius Gaudens 159

two are in conflict, is developed in great purity and intensity
in the direction of the tertius gaudens.

Thus the advantage accruing to the tertius derives from the
fact that he has an equal, equally independent, and for this
very reason decisive, relation to two others. The advantage,
however, does not exclusively depend on the hostility of the
two. A certain general differentiation, mutual strangeness, or
qualitative dualism may be sufficient. This, in fact, is the basic
formula of the type, and the hostility of the elements is merely
a specific case of it, even if it is the most common. The following
favorite position of the tertius ^ for instance, is very characteristic,
and it results from mere dualism. If B is obligated to a particular
duty toward A, and if he delegates this duty to C and D among
whom it is to be distributed, then A is greatly tempted to impose
on each of them, if possible, a little more than half; from both
together, therefore, he profits more than he would have earlier,
when the duty was in the hand of only one person. In 1751, the
government had to issue an explicit decree in regard to the
breaking up of peasant holdings in Bohemia. The law was to
the effect that if a holding was divided by the manorial lord,
each of its parts could not be burdened with more than its por-
tion, in correspondence with its size, of the socage that adhered
to the whole.

More generally, if a duty is turned over to two, the most
important idea is that each of them now has to do less than the
one did who formerly had been burdened with it alone: in
comparison with this notion, the more exact definition of the
quantum recedes, and can therefore easily be changed. In other
words, the merely numerical fact of the party's two-ness, instead
of oneness, here engenders, so to speak, the situation of tertius
gaudens. In the following case, however, it arises on the basis of
a duality characterized by qualitative differences. This explains
the judicial power of the English king, which was unheard of
for the Germanic Middle Ages. William the Conqueror wished
to respect the laws of the Anglo-Saxon population as he found
them. But his Normans, too, brought their native laws with
them. These two law complexes did not fit one another; they
did not result in a unitary right of the people as over against
the king: consistent with his own interest,the king could force

160 The Triad

himself between the two laws and thus could practically annul
them. The discord of these nations resulted (and in similar cases
results) not only from their actual conflicts but also from their
actual differences that made a common legal enforcement
difficult. In this discord lay the support of absolutism; and, for
this reason, the power of absolutism declined steadily as soon
as the two nationalities fused into one.

The favorable position of the tertius disappears quite gen-
erally the moment the two others become a unit — the moment,
that is, the group in question changes from a combination of
three elements back into that of two. It is instructive, not only
in regard to this particular problem but in regard to group life
in general, to observe that this result may be brought about
without any personal conciliation or fusion of interests. The
object of the antagonism can be withdrawn from the conflict
of subjective claims by being fixed objectively. This, it seems
to me, is shown with particular clarity in the following case.
Modern industry leads to ever new interrelations among the
most heterogeneous trades. It constantly creates new tasks that
historically do not belong to any existing trade. It has thus
brought about, especially in England, frequent conflicts over
the respective competencies among the different categories of
labor. In the large enterprises, shipbuilders and carpenters,
plumbers and blacksmiths, boilermakers and metaldrillers,
masons and bricklayers are very often in conflict over the ques-
tion concerning to whom a certain job belongs. Every trade
stops working as soon as it believes that another trade interferes
with its own tasks. The insoluble contradiction here consists
in the presupposition that subjective rights to certain objects
are specifically delimited, while they are continuously in flux
in their very nature. Often such conflicts among workmen
gravely undermine their position toward the entrepreneur. He
has a moral advantage as soon as his workers strike because of
their own discords, and thereby do him immeasurable harm.
Furthermore, he has it in his arbitrary power to subdue any
trade by threatening to employ another trade for the work
in question. The economic interest that everyone of them has
in not losing the job, is based on the fear that the competing
worker might do it more cheaply and might, thereby, contribute

The Tertius Gaudens 161

to lowering the standard wage paid for it. It was therefore pro-
posed, as the only possible solution, that the trade unions should
fix the standard wage for every particular work in consultation
with the federated entrepreneurs, and then leave it up to the
workers which category of laborers they wanted to employ for
a job in question. The excluded category thus no longer has
to fear any harm to its basic economic interest. This objectifica-
tion of the matter of dispute deprives the entrepreneur of the
advantage that he gains by lowering the wages and playing up
the two parties against one another. Although he has retained
the choice among the different labor groups, he can no longer
make any profitable use of it. The earlier mixture of personal
and objective elements has become differentiated. In regard
to the first, the entrepreneur remains in the formal situation
of tertius gaudens; but the objective fixation of the second has
taken from this situation the chance of exploitation.

Many among the various kinds of conflicts mentioned here
and in connection with the next form of triad, must have
operated to produce or increase the power position of the church
ever since the Middle Ages, when it began to have it among
secular powers. In view of the incessant unrests and quarrels
in the political districts, large and small, the church, the only
stable element, an element already revered or feared by every
party, must have gained an incomparable prerogative. Many
times, it is quite generally the mere stability of the tertius in
the changing stages of the conflict — the fact that the tertius is
not touched by its contents — ^around which oscillate the ups
and downs of the two parties; and this gives the stable third
element its superiority and its possibility of gain. Other things
being equal, it may be said that the more violently and, espe-
cially, the longer the positions of the conflicting parties oscillate,
all the more superior, respected, and of greater opportunity will
the position of the tertius be rendered by firm endurance, as a
purely formal fact. There is probably no more gigantic example
of this widely observed relationship than the Catholic Church
itself.

For the general characterization of the tertius gaudens, which
applies to all of its particular manifestations alike, a further
point must be noted. This is, that among the causes of his pre-

162 The Triad

rogative, there is the mere difference of psychological energies
which he invests in the relationship, as compared with the
others. Earlier, in regard to the non-partisan in general, I men-
tioned that he represents intellectuality, while the parties in
conflict represent feeling and will. If the non-partisan is in the
position of tertius gaudens^ that is, of egoistic exploiter of the
situation, this intellectuality gives him a dominating place. It is
enthroned, as it were, at an ideal height. The tertius fully enjoys
that external advantage which every complication bestows upon
the party whose feelings are not involved. Certainly, he may
scorn the practical exploitation of his less biased grasp of the
conjuncture, of his strength, which is not committed one way
or another but can always be used for different purposes. But
even if he does, his situation gives him at least the feeling of a
slight ironical superiority over the parties which stake so much
for the sake of what to him is so indifferent.

§ 4. Divide et Impera

The previously discussed combinations of three elements
were characterized by an existing or emerging conflict between
two, from which the third drew his advantage. One particular
variety of this combination must now be considered separately,
although in reality it is not always clearly delimited against other
types. The distinguishing nuance consists in the fact that the
third element intentionally produces the conflict in order to
gain a dominating position. Here too, however, we must preface
the treatment of this constellation by pointing out that the
number three is merely the minimum number of elements that
are necessary for this formation, and that it may thus serve as
the simplest schema. Its outline is that initially two elements
are united or mutually dependent in regard to a third, and that
this third element knows how to put the forces combined against
him into action against one another. The outcome is that the
two either keep each other balanced so that he, who is not inter-
fered with by either, can pursue his advantages; or that they so
weaken one another that neither of them can stand up against
his superiority.

I shall now characterize some steps in the scale on which the

Divide et Impera 163

relevant phenomena may be arranged. The simplest case is found
where a superior prevents the unification of elements which do
not yet positively strive after unification but might do so. Here,
above all, belong the legal prohibitions against political organi-
zations, as well as against leagues of organizations each of which,
individually, is permitted. Usually there is no specifically defined
fear or demonstrable danger that such organizations might
present to the ruling powers. Rather, the form of association
as such is feared, because there is the possibility that it might
be combined with a dangerous content. Pliny, in his correspond-
ence with Trajan, states explicitly that the Christians are dan-
gerous because they form an association; otherwise they are
completely harmless. On the one hand, there is the experience
that revolutionary tendencies, or tendencies that are at all
directed toward changing what is, must adopt the form of unify-
ing as many interested parties as possible. But this experience
changes into the logically false but psychologically well under-
standable inverse notion according to which all associations have
tendencies directed against the existing powers. Their prohibi-
tion thus is founded upon a possibility of the second power, as
it were. In the first place, the a priori prohibited associations
are merely possWle and very often do not exist even as wishes
of the elements separated by the prohibition. In the second
place, the dangers for the sake of which the prohibition occurred
would only be possibilities^ even if the associations actually
existed. In this elimination of anticipated associations, the
'‘divide and rule,” therefore, appears as the subtlest imaginable
prophylactic on the part of the one element against all possi-
bilities that might result from the fusion of the others.

This preventive form may exist even where the plurality
that confronts one element consists of the various power com-
ponents of one identical phenomenon. The Anglo-Norman
kings saw to it that the manors of the feudal lords were in as
widely scattered locations as possible; some of the most powerful
vassals had their seats in from seventeen to twenty-one different
shires each. Because of this principle of local distribution, the
dominions of the crown vassals could not consolidate themselves
into great sovereign courts as they could on the continent.
Regarding the earlier land distributions among the sons of

164 The Triad

rulers, we hear that the individual pieces were parceled out as
widely as possible in order to preclude their complete separation
from the ruler. In this manner, the unified state wishes to pre-
serve its dominion by splitting up all territorial subdivisions:
if they were contiguous, they could more easily remove them-
selves from its influence.

Where there actually exists a desire for unification, the
prophylactic prevention of the unification has an even more
pointed effect. A relevant case (which, to be sure, is complicated
by other motives as well) is the fact that generally, in wage and
other controversial matters, employers categorically refuse to
negotiate with intermediary persons who do not belong to their
own employees. This refusal has two functions. It prevents the
workers from strengthening their position by associating with
a personality who has nothing to fear or to hope from the em-
ployer. In the second place, it is an obstacle to the unified action
of workers in different trades toward a common goal, for in-
stance, the general establishment of a uniform wage scale. By
rejecting the middle person who might negotiate on behalf of
several workers’ groups alike, the employer precludes the
threatening unification of the workers. In view of the existing
tendencies toward such a unification, this refusal is considered
very important for his position. For this reason, employers’ asso-
ciations sometimes impose this isolation of the labor force, in
the case of conflicts and negotiations, as a statutory duty upon
each of their members. It was an extraordinary progress in the
history of English trade unions, especially in the third quarter
of the nineteenth century, when the institution of an impersonal
agency made the employer’s exploitation of this ''divide^' im-
possible. For in this manner, the arbitrations by non-partisans
who were resorted to in conflict situations, began to attain a
finality which was recognized beyond the individual case by
both parties to the matter at issue. Thus a general rule frequently
regulated the negotiations between employer and employee,
although they still negotiated individually. But this is, obviously,
an intermediate step in the direction of collective contracts
governing a whole trade and all interests within it; and this
stage of collective contracts eliminates in principle the practice
of ‘‘divide and rule."

Divide et Impera 165

In a similar fashion, the attempts of constitutional monarchs
at splitting up parliaments in order to prevent the rise of in-
convenient majorities, go beyond mere prophylactic measures.
I mention only one example which is of major interest because
of its radicalism. Under George III, the English court had the
practice of declaring the party principle and its operation as
actually inadmissible, and incompatible with the welfare of the
state. It did so on the thesis that only the individual and his
individual capabilities could render political services. By desig-
nating laws and general directives as the specific functions of
parties, the court requested '‘men, not measures.*’ It thus played
up the practical significance of individuality against the actions
by pluralities; it tried to dissolve the plurality into its atoms,
allegedly its only real and effective elements, by somewhat de-
rogatorily identifying it with abstract generality itself.

The separation of the elements attains a more active, rather
than a merely prohibitive form when the third person creates
jealousy between them. The reference here is not yet to cases
where he makes them destroy one another. On the contrary, here
we are thinking of tendencies which often are conservative:
the third wants to maintain his already existing prerogative by
preventing a threatening coalition of the other two from arising,
or at least from developing beyond mere beginnings. This tech-
nique seems to have been used with particular finesse in a case
that is reported of ancient Peru. It was the general custom of
the Incas to divide a newly conquered tribe in two approxi-
mately equal halves and to place a supervisor over each of them,
but to give these two supervisors slightly different ranks. This
was indeed the most suitable means for provoking rivalry be-
tween the two heads, which prevented any united action against
the ruler on the part of the subjected territory. By contrast, both
identical ranks and greatly different ranks would have made
unification much easier. If the two heads had had the same rank,
an equal distribution of leadership in case of action would have
been more likely than any other arrangement; and, since there
would have been need for subordination, peers would have most
probably submitted to such a technical necessity. If the two heads
had had very diflEerent ranks, the leadership of the one would
have found no opposition. The slight difference in rank least

166 The Triad

of all allows an organic and satisfactory arrangement in the
unification feared, since the one would doubtless have claimed
unconditional prerogative because of his superiority, which, on
the other hand, was not significant enough to suggest the same
claim to the other.

The principle of the unequal distribution of values (of what-
ever description) in order to make the ensuing jealousy a means
for '‘divide and rule,” is a widely popular technique. But it
should be noted that there are certain sociological circumstances
that offer basic protection against it. Thus, the attempt was made
to agitate Australian aborigines against one another by means
of unequally distributed gifts. But this always failed in the face
of the communism of the hordes, which distributed all gifts
among all members, no matter to which they had gone. In addi-
tion to jealousy, it is particularly distrust which is used as a
psychological means to the same end. Distrust, in contrast to
jealousy, is apt to prevent especially larger groups from forming
conspiratory associations. In the most effective manner, this
principle was employed by the government of Venice which, on
a gigantic scale, invited the citizens to denounce all in any way
suspect fellow citizens. Nobody knew whether his nearest ac-
quaintance was in the service of the state inquisition. Revolu-
tionary plans, which presuppose the mutual confidence of large
numbers of persons, were thus cut at the root, so that in the later
history of Venice, open revolts were practically absent.

The grossest form of "divide and rule,” the unleashing of
positive battle between two parties, may have its intention in the
relationship of the third element either to the two or to objects
lying outside them. The second of these two alternatives occurs
where one of three job applicants manages to turn the two others
against one another so that they reciprocally destroy their chances
by gossip and calumny which each circulates about the other.
In all these cases, the art of the third element is shown by the
distance he knows how to keep between himself and the action
which he starts. The more invisible the threads are by which he
directs the fight, the better he knows how to build a fire in such
a way that it goes on burning without his further interference
and even surveillance — not only the more pointed and undis-
tracted is the fight between the two until their mutual ruin is

Divide et Impera 167

reached, but the more likely is it that the prize of the fight be-
tween them, as well as other objects that are valuable to him,
seem almost automatically to fall into his lap. In this technique,
too, the Venetians were masters. In order to take possession of
estates owned by noblemen on the mainland, they used the means
of awarding high titles to younger or inferior members of the
nobility. The indignation of their elders and superiors always
presented occasions for brawls and breaches of the peace between
the two parties, whereupon the government of Venice, in all
legal formality, confiscated the estates of the guilty parties.

It is very plausible that in all such cases, the union of the
discordant elements against the common suppressor would be a
most expedient step to take. The failure of this union quite dis-
tinctly shows the general condition of “divide and rule”: the
fact that hostilities by no means have their sufficient ground in
the clash of real interests. Once there is a need for hostility at all,
once there is an antagonism which is merely groping for its ob-
ject, it is easy to substitute for the adversary against whom hos-
tility would make sense and have a purpose, a totally different
one. “Divide and rule” requires of its artist that he create a
general state of excitation and desire to fight by means of instiga-
tions, calumnies,,flatteries, the excitement of expectations, etc.
Once this is done, it is possible to succeed in slipping in an ad-
versary that is not properly indicated. The form of the fight itself
can thus be completely separated from its content and the rea-
sonableness of this content. The third element, against whom
the hostility of the two ought to be directed, can make himself
invisible between them, so to speak, so that the clash of the two
is not against him but against one another.

Where the purpose of the third party is directed, not toward
an object, but toward the immediate domination of the other
two elements, two sociological considerations are essential, (i)
Certain elements are formed in such a way that they can be
fought successfully only by similar elements. The wish to subdue
them finds no immediate point of attack. It is, therefore, neces-
sary to divide them within themselves, as it were, and to continue
a fight among the parts which they can wage with homogeneous
weapons until they are sufficiently weakened to fall to the third
element. It has been said of England that she could gain India

168 The Triad

only by means of India. Already Xerxes had recognized that
Greeks were best to fight Greece. It is precisely those whose simi-
larity of interests makes them depend upon one another who
best know their mutual weaknesses and vulnerable points. The
principle of similia similibus, of eliminating a condition by
producing a similar one, therefore applies here on the largest
scale. Mutual promotion and unification is best gained if there
is a certain measure of qualitative difference, because this differ-
ence produces a supplementation, a growing together, and an
organically differentiated life. Mutual destruction, on the other
hand, seems to succeed best if there is qualitative homogeneity,
except, of course, in those cases where one party has such a
quantitative superiority of power that the relation of its particu-
lar characteristics to those of the other becomes altogether irrele-
vant. The whole category of hostilities that has its extreme de-
velopment in the fight between brothers, draws its radically
destructive character from the fact that experience and knowl-
edge, as well as the instincts flowing from their common root,
give each of them the most deadly weapons precisely against this
specific adversary. The basis of the relations among like elements
is their common knowledge of external conditions and their
empathy with the inner situation. Evidently, this is also the
means for the deepest hurts, which neglect no possibility of at-
tack. Since in its very nature this means is reciprocal, it leads
to the most radical annihilation. For this reason, the fight of like
against like, the splitting up of the adversary into two qualita-
tively homogeneous parties, is one of the most pervasive realiza-
tions of '‘divide and rule.”

( 2 ) Where it is not possible for the suppressor to have his
victims alone do his business, where, that is, he himself must
take a hand in the fight, the schema is very simple: he supports
one of them long enough for the other to be suppressed, where-
upon the first is an easy prey for him. The most expedient man-
ner is to support the one who is the stronger to begin with. This
may take on the more negative form that, within a complex of
elements intended for suppression, the more powerful is merely
spared. When subjugating Greece, Rome was remarkably con-
siderate in her treatment of Athens and Sparta. This procedure
is bound to produce resentment and jealousy in the one camp.

Divide et Impera 169

and haughtiness and blind confidence in the other — a split which
makes the prey easily available for the suppressor. It is a tech-
nique employed by many rulers: he protects the stronger of two,
both of whom are actually interested in his own downfall, until
he has ruined the weaker; then he changes fronts and advances
against the one now left in isolation, and subjugates him. This
technique is no less popular in the founding of world empires
than in the brawls of street urchins. It is employed by govern-
ments in the manipulation of political parties as it is in competi-
tive struggles in which three elements confront one another —
perhaps a very powerful financier or industrialist and two less
important competitors whose powers, though different from
one another, are yet both a nuisance to him. In this case, the
first, in order to prevent the two others from joining up, will
make a price agreement or production arrangement with the
stronger of the two, who draws considerable advantages from it,
while the weaker is destroyed by the arrangement. Once he is,
the second can be shaken off, for until then he was the ally of
the first, but now he has no more backing and is being ruined by
means of underselling or other methods.

Chapter 5

The Importance of Specific
Numbers for Relations
among Groups

§ 1 . Group Subdivision

I NOW PROCEED TO DISCUSS

a totally different type of sociological formations that depend
upon the numerical determination of their elements. In the
case of the dyads and triads, the point at issue was the inner
group life with all its diflEerentiations, syntheses and antitheses,
as it develops at those minimum or maximum numbers of
members. The concern was not with the group as a whole in
its relation to other groups or to a larger group of which it is
a part, but rather with the immanent mutual relationship
among its elements. But we may also ask the inverse question
regarding the significance of numerical determination for the
relations of the group with the outside. Here its most essen-
tial function is its possibility of dividing a group into sub-
groups. The teleological import of this subdivision, as has already
been indicated earlier, is the easier surveillance and manipula-
bility of the total group. It is often its earliest organization or,
more correctly, its mechanization. In a purely formal respect,
it supplies the possibility of preserving the form, character, and
arrangement of the subdivisions, irrespective of the quantitative
development of the total group itself. For, the components with
which the administration of the whole counts remain, in a quali-
tative sense, sociologically the same: the increase of the whole
merely changes their multiplier. This, for instance, is the im-
mense utility of the numerical division of armies. The increase
of an army is a matter of relatively easy technique: it proceeds

170

The Decimal Principle 171

by the ever repeated formation of new cadres which themselves,
however, are numerically, and hence organizationally, rigidly
fixed.

§ 2 . The Decimal Principle

Evidently, this advantage is connected with numerical de-
termination in general, but not with any particular numbers. Yet
one class of numbers, which has already been mentioned earlier,
has attained a particular historical importance for social divi-
sions: ten and its derivations. In this unification of ten members
for purposes of solidary work and responsibility, which we find
in many of the oldest cultures, no doubt the number of fingers
was decisive. Where arithmetical skill is completely lacking,
the fingers provide a first principle of orientation for determin-
ing a plurality of units and showing their divisions and composi-
tions. This general significance of the principle of five and ten
has been noted often enough. Its social significance is due to a
very special circumstance. The fingers are relatively independent
of one another and have relative autonomy in their movements.
But, on the other hand, they are inseparable (in France one says
of two friends: 'Tls^ont unis comme deux doigts de la main**) and
receive their very sense only from their togetherness. They thus
offer a highly pertinent model for social groups of individuals:
the unity and peculiar co-efficacy among small subgroups of
larger collectivities could not be symbolized more impressively.

Even quite recently, the Czech secret society “Omladina''
was constituted on the principle of the number five: its leader-
ship belonged to several “hands,’’ each of which consisted of a
thumb (the highest leader) and four fingers.^^ How strongly a

1* Lcx)ked at from a different and more general angle, the division by numbers
of fingers belongs in the typical tendency to use phenomena of a given, impressive,
natural rhythm for this sociological purpose, at least as far as name and symbol
are concerned. A secret political society under Louis Philippe called itself “The
Seasons.” Six members under the leadership of a seventh, who was called Sunday,
formed a week; four weeks, a month; three months, a season; and four seasons, the
highest unit that stood under a supreme commander. In spite of all the play-
fulness of these designations, the feeling that the group initiated a unit of different
elements that was indicated by nature, probably somehow played its role. And the
mystical coloration toward which secret societies tend in general was likely to favor
this symbolization with which — so one could well believe — one could inject a
cosmically formative force into a merely willed structure.

172 The Importance of Specific Numbers

unit of ten within a larger group was felt to belong together, is
also shown (perhaps) by the custom, which can be traced back
to early antiquity, of decimating army subdivisions in the case
of rebellions, desertions, etc. It was ten that were considered a
unit which, for the purposes of punishment, could be repre-
sented by the individual; or perhaps there also was the vague
experience that among each ten men there usually is, on the
average, one ringleader. The division of a group into ten numeri-
cally equal parts evidently leads to a totally different result than
the division into individuals each representing ten others, and
the two types of division have no objective or practical connec-
tion with one another. Nevertheless, it seems to me that psy-
chologically, the first derives from the second. When the Jews
returned from the Second Exile — ^42,360 Jews with their slaves —
they were distributed in such a way that one tenth, drawn out
by lot, took residence in Jerusalem, and the remaining nine
tenths in the country. For the capital, these were decidedly too
few, and indeed one had at once to think of measures to increase
the population of Jerusalem. It appears that here the power of
the decimal principle as the ground of social division made
people blind to practical exigencies.

The Hundred is derived from the same principle. Above all,
it is essentially a means of division, and historically the most im-
portant one. I already mentioned that it has become the con-
ceptual representative of division itself, so that its name remains
attached to the subgroup even when this subgroup contains
considerably fewer or more members. The Hundred — most de-
cisively perhaps in the large role that it plays in the administra-
tion of Anglo-Saxon England — appears, so to speak, as the idea
of the part-group in general; and its external incompleteness
does not alter its inner significance. It is very characteristic that
in ancient Peru the Hundreds voluntarily continued to pay their
tribute to the Incas by exerting all their strength, long after they
had sunk to a fourth of their original number. The sociological
basis here is that these territorial groups were conceived as units
irrespective of their members. Since it seems, however, that the
obligation to pay taxes referred, not to the group, but to its one
hundred elements, the taking over of this obligation by the re-

The Decimal Principle 173

maining twenty-five shows all the more distinctly how uncondi-
tional, naturally solidary a unit the Hundred was felt to be.

It is inevitable that . the division into Hundreds breaks
through various organic relations — of kin, neighborhood, and
sympathy — among elements and their aggregates. The decimal
division is always a mechanical-technical principle: a teleologi-
cal, not a natural-spontaneous principle. Occasionally, in fact,
it is combined with a more organic division. The medieval arnly
of the German empire was constituted according to tribes; but
at the same time we hear that the division by Thousands cut
through and superseded the other order which was more natural
and more determined by a terminus a quo,^^ Nevertheless, the
strong centripetality, which is revealed by the organization of
the group into Hundreds, suggests that its significance lies not
only in its classificatory purpose. In fact, classification is merely
a superficial feature; by means of it the larger, inclusive group
is served. Aside from this, the number hundred itself is found
to bestow a particular significance and dignity upon the group
so composed. The nobility in Locri Epizephyrii traced its origin
to noble women of the so-called “hundred houses'* who partici-
pated in the founding of the colony. Likewise, the original set-
tlements through .which Rome was founded are said to have
consisted of a hundred Latin gentesj a hundred Sabellic gentes,
and a hundred gentes that were composed of various elements.
One hundred members apparently give the group a certain style,
an exactly delimited, rigorous contour in comparison with which
a slightly smaller or larger number appears relatively vague and
less complete in itself. The Hundred has an inner unity and
systematic character which makes it particularly suitable for
the formation of genealogical myths. It represents a peculiar syn-
thesis of mystical symmetry and rational sense. By comparison,
all other numbers of group elements are felt to be accidental, not
equally held together by their inner coherence, not equally
unchangeable in their very structure. The especially adequate
relation to the categories of our mind, the ease with which one
hundred can be surveyed and controlled and made so suitable
as a classificatory principle, appear to be the reflection of an

18 “Limit from which; starting-point.** Here; ‘‘from the standpoint of the com-
ponent individuals (rather than from that of the administration).** — ^Tr.

174 The Importance of Specific Numbers

objective characteristic of the group which the group derives
from precisely this numerical determination.

§ 3 . The Outside Regulation of Groups according to
Their Maximum and Minimum Sizes

This characteristic is totally different from those so far dis-
cussed. In the combinations of two and three, the number de-
termined the inner life of the group. But it did so not in its
capacity of mere quantum. The dyad and the triad showed their
characteristics not because they had these respective sizes as
total groups: what we observed, rather, were the determinations
of every single element by its interaction with one as over against
two other elements. It is quite different in regard to all deriva-
tions of the number of fingers. Here, the ground of the synthesis
lies in the greater convenience with which the group can be
surveyed, organized, and directed. In brief, it does not properly
lie in the group itself but in the subject which theoretically or
practically has to deal with it. We come, now, to a third signifi-
cance of the numbers of members. We now discover that, ob-
jectively and as a whole, that is, regardless of differences among
the individual positions of its elements, the group shows certain
characteristics only below or only above a certain size. In quite
general terms, this was already discussed in connection with the
difference between large and small groups. But now the question
is whether certain characteristics of the total group might not
derive from specific numbers of members. Even here, of course,
the interactions among individuals constitute the real and de-
cisive process of group life. But now it is not these interactions
in their details but their fusion into an image of the whole which
is the topic of inquiry.

All facts that suggest this significance of group quantity be-
long to one type, namely, to the legal prescriptions regarding
the minimum or maximum membership of associations which
claim certain functions or rights and carry out certain duties. It
is easy to find the reason for this. There are particular qualities
which associations develop on the basis of the number of mem-
bers and which are justified by legal prescriptions regarding
these numbers. These qualities and prescriptions, of course.

The Outside Regulation of Groups 175

would always be the same and would always be attached to the
same numbers, if there were no psychological differences among
men. But the effect of a group does not follow its quantity as
exactly as does the energy effect of a moved homogeneous mass
of matter. The vast individual differences among the members
make all exact determinations and pre-determinations com-
pletely illusory. They explain why the same measure of strength
or thoughtlessness, of concentration or decentralization, of self-
sufficiency or need for leadership, are at one moment shown by
a group of a certain size, at another by a much smaller group,
but, at still another moment, only by a much larger one. On the
other hand, the laws that are determined by these characteristics
of associations cannot, for technical reasons, be concerned with
such oscillations and paralyzations by the accidental human ma-
terial. They must indicate particular numbers of members which
they consider average and with which they connect the groups*
rights and duties. They do so on the assumption that a certain
common spirit, mood, strength, or tendency among a certain
number of persons emerges if, and only if, this number attains a
certain limit. According to whether this result is desired or
feared, a minimum number is requested, or a maximum number
is allowed.

I will first give a few examples of the second alternative. In
the early Greek period, there were legal provisions according
to which ship crews could not consist of more than five men, in
order to prevent them from engaging in piracy. In 1436, the
Rhenish cities, fearing the rise of associations among apprentices,
prescribed that no more than three apprentices should go about
in the same dress. In fact, political prohibitions are most common
in this category generally. In 1305, Philip the Fair forbade all
meetings of more than five persons, regardless of their rank or
the form of the meetings. Under the Ancien Regime, twenty
noblemen were not allowed without special concession from
the King to assemble even for a conference. Napoleon III pro-
hibited all organizations of more than twenty persons that were
not specifically authorized. In England, the Conventicle Act
under Charles II made all religious home assemblies of more
than five persons subject to punishment. English Reaction at the
beginning of the nineteenth century prohibited all meetings of

176 The Importance of Specific Numbers

more than fifty persons that were not announced long in advance.
Under conditions of siege, often not more than three or five
persons may stand together in the street. A few years ago, the
Berlin Supreme Court of judicature defined a Versammlung
in the legal sense, that is, an assembly requiring notification of
the police, as a meeting of eight persons and more. In the purely
economic sphere, we find the same idea, for instance, in the
English law of 1708 (established under the influence of the Bank
of England), according to which legal financial associations were
not permitted to have more than six members.

In all these cases, we may assume, the government is con-
vinced that only within groups of the sizes indicated is found the
courage or rashness, the spirit of enterprise, or the capacity for
being pushed into certain actions, which it does not wish to
emerge. This motive is most distinct in legislation that has to
do with moral considerations. If the number of participants in
a drinking bout or in a parade or procession, etc., is limited, it
is because of the experience that, in a larger mass, sensuous im-
pulses gain more easily the upper hand, contagion by bad ex-
ample spreads more rapidly, the individual feeling of respon-
sibility is paralyzed.

The opposite direction, on the same basis, is shown in those
regulations which require a minimum of participants for groups
to attain a certain legal effect. In England, any economic asso-
ciation can obtain the right to incorporate as soon as it has seven
members. Everywhere, the law requires a certain (though greatly
varying) minimum number of judges for finding a legally valid
verdict so that, for instance, in some places certain judicial col-
leges are simply called the Seven. In regard to the first example,
it is assumed that only this particular number of members results
in adequate guarantees and an effective solidarity, without which
the privileges of corporations are a danger to the national
economy. In the second example, only the prescribed minimum
number seems to ensure that individual errors and extreme
opinions balance one another and, thus, allow a collective opin-
ion to emerge which finds what is objectively correct. This mini-
mum requirement is especially evident in connection with
religious phenomena. The regular meetings of the Buddhist
monks of a certain territory, which took place for the purpose

The Outside Regulation of Groups 177

of renewed religious indoctrination and a kind of confession,
required the presence of at least four monks. Only this number
completed (as it were) the synod; and, as a member of this synod,
each monk had a somewhat different significance from what he
had as an individual monk — ^which he was only as long as no
more than three came together. There must always be at least
ten Jews for praying in common. According to the Lockean
constitution of North Carolina, any church or religious group
was allowed to form if it consisted of at least seven members.
The strength, concentration, and stability of a common religious
mood is expected, in all these cases, only of a certain number
of members, who mutually support and strengthen one another.
In sum: where the law fixes a minimum, confidence in large
numbers and distrust of isolated individual energies are at work;
where, inversely, a maximum is prescribed, distrust of large num-
bers is in operation, but not of their individual components.

But whether a prohibition concerns a maximum, or a per-
mission a minimum, the legislators must know that the results
feared or wished are connected only in an uncertain and average
way with the sizes established. And yet, the arbitrary character of
the determination is as inevitable and as justified as it is in the fix-
ing of a certain age at which a man comes to have the privileges
and duties of majority. To be sure, the real capacity to be of
“legal age’' develops in some individuals earlier, in some later,
and in none suddenly at the minute fixed by law. But practice can
attain the fixed standards it needs only by splitting up, at a cer-
tain point, a continuous series into two segments created for
legal purposes. The profoundly different ways of treating these
segments cannot be justified on the grounds of their objective
natures. For this reason, it is extremely instructive to note that
in all regulations of which examples were given above, the spe-
cific qualities of the persons involved are not taken into consider-
ation, although it is these qualities which determine the single
case. But they are nothing tangible — the only tangible element
left is number. And it is essential to observe the ubiquitous,
deep feeling that the number would be decisive in case individual
differences did not cancel its effects — but that, for this very
reason, these effects are sure to be contained in the eventual
total phenomenon.

Part Three

Superordination and
Subordination

Chapter 1

Introduction

§ 1 . Domination^ a Form of Interaction

NOBODY, IN GENERAL,

wishes that his influence completely determine the other indi-
vidual. He rather wants this influence, this determination of the
other, to act back upon him. Even the abstract will-to-dominate,
therefore, is a case of interaction. This will draws its satisfaction
from the fact that the acting or suffering of the other, his posi-
tive or negative condition, offers itself to the dominator as the
product of his will. The significance of this solipsistic exercise
of domination (so to speak) consists, for the superordinate him-
self, exclusively in the consciousness of his efficacy. Sociologically
speaking, it is only a rudimentary form. By virtue of it alone,
sociation occurs as little as it does between a sculptor and his
statue, although the statue, too, acts back on the artist through
his consciousness of his own creative power. The practical func-
tion of this desire for domination, even in this sublimated form,
is not so much the exploitation of the other as the mere con-
sciousness of this possibility. For the rest, it does not represent
the extreme case of egoistic inconsiderateness. Certainly, the de-
sire for domination is designed to break the internal resistance
of the subjugated (whereas egoism usually aims only at the victory
over his external resistance). But still, even the desire for dom-
ination has some interest in the other person, who constitutes
a value for it. Only when egoism does not even amount to a de-
sire for domination; only when the other is absolutely indifferent
and a mere means for purposes which lie beyond him, is the
last shadow of any sociating process removed.

The definition of later Roman jurists shows, in a relative
way, that the elimination of all independent significance of one

181

182 Introduction

of the two interacting parties annuls the very notion of society.
This definition was to the effect that the societas leonina ^ must
not be conceived of as a social contract. A comparable state-
ment has been made regarding the lowest-paid workers in modern
giant enterprises which preclude all effective competition among
rivaling entrepreneurs for the services of these laborers. It has
been said that the difference in the strategic positions of workers
and employers is so overwhelming that the work contract ceases
to be a “contract” in the ordinary sense of the word, because
the former are unconditionally at the mercy of the latter. It thus
appears that the moral maxim never to use a man as a mere
means is actually the formula of every sociation. Where the sig-
nificance of the one party sinks so low that its effect no longer
enters the relationship with the other, there is as little ground
for speaking of sociation as there is in the case of the carpenter
and his bench.

Within a relationship of subordination, the exclusion of all
spontaneity whatever is actually rarer than is suggested by such
widely used popular expressions as “coercion,” “having no
choice,” “absolute necessity,” etc. Even in the most oppressive
and cruel cases of subordination, there is still a considerable
measure of personal freedom. We merely do not become aware
of it, because its manifestation would entail sacrifices which we
usually never think of taking upon ourselves. Actually, the “ab-
solute” coercion which even the most cruel tyrant imposes upon
us is always distinctly relative. Its condition is our desire 4:0
escape from the threatened punishment or from other conse-
quences of our disobedience. More precise analysis shows that
the super-subordination relationship destroys the subordinate’s
freedom only in the case of direct physical violation. In every
other case, this relationship only demands a price for the realiza-
tion of freedom — a price, to be sure, which we are not willing to
pay. It can narrow down more and more the sphere of external
conditions under which freedom is clearly realized, but, except
for physical force, never to the point of the complete disappear-
ance of freedom. The moral side of this analysis does not concern
us here, but only its sociological aspect. This aspect consists in

1 “Sociation with a lion/* that is, a partnership in which all the advantage is on
one side. — ^Tr.

Authority and Prestige 183

the fact that interaction, that is, action which is mutually de-
termined, action which stems exclusively from personal origins,
prevails even where it often is not noted. It exists even in those
cases of superordination and subordination — and therefore
makes even those cases societal forms — ^where according to popu-
lar notions the ‘"coercion** by one party deprives the other of
every spontaneity, and thus of every real “effect,” or contribu-
tion to the process of interaction.

§ 2. Authority and Prestige

Relationships of superordination and subordination play an
immense role in social life. It is therefore of the utmost import-
ance for its analysis to clarify the spontaneity and co-efficiency
of the subordinate subject and thus to correct their widespread
minimization by superficial notions about them. For instance,
what is called “authority** presupposes, in a much higher degree
than is usually recognized, a freedom on the part of the person
subjected to authority. Even where authority seems to “crush**
him, it is based not only on coercion or compulsion to yield to it.

The peculiar structure of “authority** is significant for social
life in the mosfr varied ways; it shows itself in beginnings as well
as in exaggerations, in acute as well as in lasting forms. It seems
to come about in two different ways. A person of superior signi-
ficance or strength may acquire, in his more immediate or re-
mote milieu, an overwhelming weight of his opinions, a faith,
or a confidence which have the character of objectivity. He thus
enjoys a prerogative and an axiomatic trustworthiness in his de-
lusions which excel, at least by a fraction, the value of mere
subjective personality, which is always variable, relative, and
subject to criticism. By acting “authoritatively,** the quantity
of his significance is transformed into a new quality; it assumes
for his environment the physical state — metaphorically speaking
— of objectivity.

But the same result, authority, may be attained in the oppo-
site direction. A super-individual power — state, church, school,
family or military organizations — clothes a person with a reputa-
tion, a dignity, a power of ultimate decision, which would never
flow from his individuality. It is the nature of an authoritative

184 Introduction

person to make decisions with a certainty and automatic recog-
nition which logically pertain only to impersonal, objective
axioms and deductions. In the case under discussion, authority
descends upon a person from above, as it were, whereas in the
case treated before, it arises from the qualities of the person
himself, through a generatio aequivoca.^ But evidently, at this
point of transition and change-over [from the personal to the
authoritative situation], the more or less voluntary faith of the
party subjected to author tiy comes into play. This transformation
of the value of personality into a super-personal value gives the
personality something which is beyond its demonstrable and
rational share, however slight this addition may be. The believer
in authority himself achieves the transformation. He (the sub-
ordinate element) participates in a sociological event which
requires his spontaneous cooperation. As a matter of fact, the
very feeling of the “oppressiveness” of authority suggests that
the autonomy of the subordinate party is actually presupposed
and never wholly eliminated.

Another nuance of superiority, which is designated as “pres-
tige,” must be distinguished from “authority.” Prestige lacks
the element of super-subjective significance; it lacks the identity
of the personality with an objective power or norm. Leadership
by means of prestige is determined entirely by the strength of
the individual. This individual force always remains conscious
of itself. Moreover, whereas the average type of leadership always
shows a certain mixture of personal and superadded-objective
factors, prestige leadership stems from pure personality, even as
authority stems from the objectivity of norms and forces. Su-
periority through prestige consists in the ability to “push” indi-
viduals and masses and to make unconditional followers of them.
Authority does not have this ability to the same extent. The
higher, cooler, and normative character of authority is more apt
to leave room for criticism, even on the part of its followers. In
spite of this, however, prestige strikes us as the more voluntary
homage to the superior person. Actually, perhaps, the recogni-
tion of authority implies a more profound freedom of the sub-
ject than does the enchantment that emanates from the prestige
of a prince, a priest, a military or spiritual leader. But the matter
2 “Equivocal birth" or “spontaneous generation." — ^Tr.

Leader and Led 185

is difiEerent in regard to the feeling on the part of those led. In
the face of authority, we are often defenseless, whereas the dlan
with which we follow a given prestige always contains a con-
sciousness of spontaneity. Here, precisely because devotion is
only to the wholly personal, this devotion seems to flow only
from the ground of personality with its inalienable freedom.
Certainly, man is mistaken innumerable times regarding the
measure of freedom which he must invest in a certain action.
One reason for this is the vagueness and uncertainty of the
explicit conception by means of which we account for this inner
process. But in whatever way we interpret freedom, we can say
that some measure of it, even though it may not be the measure
we suppose, is present wherever there is the feeling and the con-
viction of freedom.®

§ 3. Leader and Led

The seemingly wholly passive element is in reality even more
active in relationships such as obtain between a speaker and his
audience or between a teacher and his class. Speaker and teacher
appear to be nothing but leaders; nothing but, momentarily,
superordinate. ^Yet whoever finds himself in such or a similar
situation feels the determining and controlling re-action on the
part of what seems to be a purely receptive and guided mass. This
applies not only to situations where the two parties confront one
another physically. All leaders are also led; in innumerable cases,
the master is the slave of his slaves. Said one of the greatest Ger-
man party leaders referring to his followers: “lam their leader,
therefore I must follow them.”

In the grossest fashion, this is shown by the journalist. The
journalist gives content and direction to the opinions of a mute
multitude. But he is nevertheless forced to listen, combine, and

8 Here — and analogously in many other cases — the point is not to define the
concept of prestige but only to ascertain the existence of a certain variety of human
interactions, quite irrespective of their designation. The presentation, however,
often begins appropriately with the concept which linguistic usage makes rela-
tively most suitable for the discovery of the relationship, because it suggests it.
This sounds like a merely definitory procedure. Actually, however, the attempt
is never to find the content of a concept, but to describe, rather, an actual content,
which only occasionally has the chance of being covered, more or less, by an already
existing concept.

186 Intr&duction

guess what the tendencies of this multitude are, what it desires
to hear and to have confirmed, and whither it wants to be led.
While apparently it is only the public which is exposed to his
suggestions, actually he is as much under the sway of the public^ s
suggestion. Thus, a highly complex interaction (whose two,
mutually spontaneous forces, to be sure, appear under very
different forms) is hidden here beneath the semblance of the
pure superiority of the one element and a purely passive being-
led of the other.

The content and significance of certain personal relations
consist in the fact that the exclusive function of one of the two
elements is service for the other. But the perfect measure of this
devotion of the first element often depends on the condition that
the other element surrenders to the first, even though on a differ-
ent level of the relationship. Thus, Bismarck remarked concern-
ing his relation to William I: “A certain measure of devotion
is determined by law; a greater measure, by political conviction;
beyond this, a personal feeling of reciprocity is required. — My
devotion had its principal ground in my loyalty to royalist con-
victions. But in the special form in which this royalism existed,
it is after all possible only under the impact of a certain reci-
procity — the reciprocity between master and servant.” The most
characteristic case of this type is shown, perhaps, by hypnotic
suggestion. An outstanding hypnotist pointed out that in every
hypnosis the hypnotized has an effect upon the hypnotist; and
that, although this effect cannot be easily determined, the result
of the hypnosis could not be reached without it. Thus here, too,
appearance shows an absolute influence, on the one side, and an
absolute being-influenced, on the other; but it conceals an inter-
action, an exchange of influences, which transforms the pure
one-sidedness of superordination and subordination into a socio-
logical form.

§ 4. Interaction in the Idea of “Law”

I shall cite some cases of superordination and subordination
in the field of law. It is easy to reveal the interaction which actu-
ally exists in what seems a purely unilateral situation. If the ab-
solute despot accompanies his orders by the threat of punishment

Interaction in the Idea of ''Law'" 187

or the promise of reward, this implies that he himself wishes to be
bound by the decrees he issues. The subordinate is expected to
have the right to request something of him; and by establishing
the punishment, no matter how horrible, the despot commits
himself not to impose a more severe one. Whether or not after-
ward he actually abides by the punishment established or the
reward promised is a different question: the significance of the
relation is that, although the superordinate wholly determines
the subordinate, the subordinate nevertheless is assured of a
claim on which he can insist or which he can waive. Thus even
this extreme form of the relationship still contains some sort of
spontaneity on his part.

The motive of interaction within an apparently one-sided
and passive subordination appears in a peculiar modification in
a medieval theory of the state. According to this theory, the state
came into existence because men mutually obligated one an-
other to submit to a common chief. Thus, the ruler — including,
apparently, the unconditional ruler — is appointed on the basis
of a mutual contract among his subjects. Whereas contempo-
raneous theories of domination saw its reciprocal character in
the contract between ruler and ruled, the theory under discus-
sion located this mutual nature of domination in its very basis,
the people: the obligation to the prince is conceived to be the
mere articulation, expression, or technique of a reciprocal rela-
tion among the individuals of whom his people is composed. In
Hobbes, in fact, the ruler has no means of breaking the contract
with his subjects because he has not made one; and the corollary
to this is that the subject, even if he rebels against his ruler, does
not thereby break a contract concluded with him^ but only the
contract he has entered with all other members of the society, to
the effect of letting themselves be governed by this ruler.

It is the absence of this reciprocity which accounts for the
observation that the tyranny of a group over its own members is
worse than that of a prince over his subjects. The group — and
by no means the political group alone — conceives of its mem-
bers, not as confronting it, but as being included by it as its own
links. This often results in a peculiar inconsiderateness toward
the members, which is very different from a ruler's personal
cruelty. Wherever there is, formally, confrontation (even if, con-

188 Introduction

tentually, it comes close to submission), there is interaction; and,
in principle, interaction always contains some limitation of each
party to the process (although there may be individual exceptions
to this rule). Where superordination shows an extreme incon-
siderateness, as in the case of the group that simply disposes of
its members, there no longer is any confrontation with its form
of interaction, which involves spontaneity, and hence limitation,
of both superordinate and subordinate elements.

This is very clearly expressed in the original conception of
Roman law. In its purity, the term “law” implies a submission
which does not involve any spontaneity or counter-effect on the
part of the person subordinate to the law. And the fact that the
subordinate has actually cooperated in making it — and more,
that he has given himself the law which binds him — is irrelevant.
For in doing so, he hcis merely decomposed himself into the sub-
ject and object of lawmaking; and the law which the subject
applies to the object does not change its significance only by the
fact that both subject and object are accidentally lodged in the
same physical person. Nevertheless, in their conception of law,
the Romans directly allude to the idea of interaction. For ori-
ginally, “lex” means “contract,” even though in the sense that
the conditions of the contract are fixed by its proponent, and
the other party can merely accept or reject it in its totality. In
the beginning, the lex publica populi romani implied that the
King proposed this legislation, and the people were its acceptors.
Hence the very concept which most of all seems to exclude inter-
action is, nevertheless, designed to refer to it by its linguistic
expression. In a certain sense this is revealed in the prerogative
of the Roman king that he alone was allowed to speak to the
people. Such a prerogative, to be sure, expressed the jealously
guarded exclusiveness of his rulership, even as in ancient Greece
the right of everybody to speak to the people indicated complete
democracy. Nevertheless, this prerogative implies that the sig-
nificance of speaking to the people, and, hence, of the people
themselves, was recognized. Although the people merely received
this one-sided action, they were nonetheless a contractor (whose
party to the contract, of course, was only a single person, the
king).

The purpose of these preliminary remarks was to show the

Interaction in the Idea of “Law” 189

properly sociological, social-formative character of superordina-
tion and subordination even where it appears as if a social
relationship were replaced by a purely mechanical one — ^where,
that is, the position of the subordinate seems to be that of a
means or an object for the superordinate, without any spon-
taneity. It has been possible, at least in many cases, to show the
sociologically decisive reciprocal effectiveness, which was con-
cealed under the one-sided character of influence and being-
influenced.

Chapter 2

Subordination under
an Individual

§ 1. Three Kinds of Subordination

THE KINDS OF SUPERORDI-

nation may be divided according to a three-fold scheme. This is
superficial, but convenient for our discussion. Superordination
may be exerted by an individual, by a group, or by an objective
force — social or ideal. I shall now discuss some of the sociological
implications of these possibilities.

§ 2. Kinds of Subordination under an Individual

The subordination of a group under a single person results,
above all, in a very decisive unification of the group. This unifi-
cation is almost equally evident in both of two characteristic
forms of this subordination. First, the group forms an actual,
inner unit together with its head; the ruler leads the group forces
in their own direction, promoting and fusing them; superordi-
nation, therefore, here really means only that the will of the
group has found a unitary expression or body. Secondly, the
group feels itself in opposition to its head and forms a party
against him.

In regard to the first form, every sociological consideration
immediately shows the immeasurable advantage which one-man
rule has for the fusion and energy-saving guidance of the group
forces. I will cite only two instances of common subordination to
one element. These cases are very heterogeneous as far as their
contents are concerned, but nevertheless show how irreplaceable
this subordination is for the unity of the whole. The sociology

190

Kinds of Subordination under an Individual 191

of religion must make a basic distinction between two types of
religious organization. There may be the unification of group
members which lets the common god grow, as it were, out of this
togetherness itself, as the symbol and the sanctification of their
belonging together. This is true in many primitive religions. On
the other hand, only the conception of the god itself may bring
the members together into a unit — members who before had no,
or only slight, relations with one another. How well Christianity
exemplifies this second type need not be described, nor is it neces-
sary to emphasize how particular Christian sects find their speci-
fic and especially strong cohesion in the absolutely subjective
and mystical relation to the person of Jesus, a relation which
each member possesses as an individual, and thus quite inde-
pendently of every other member and of the total group. But
even of the Jews it has been asserted that they feel the contractual
relation to Jehovah which they hold in common, that is, which
directly concerns every one of them, as the real power and signi-
ficance of membership in the Jewish nation.

By contrast, in other religions which originated at the same
time as Judaism, it was kinship that connected each member
with every other, and only later, all of them with the divine
principle. On the basis of its widely ramified personal depend-
encies and “services,” medieval feudalism had frequent occasion
to exemplify this same formal structure. It is perhaps most
characteristically shown in the associations of the “ministers”
(unfree court servants and house servants) who stood in a close,
purely personal relation to the prince. Their associations had
no objective basis whatever, such as the village communities
under bondage had by virtue of the nearby manor. The “minis-
ters” were employed in highly varied services and had their
residences in different localities, but nevertheless formed tightly
closed associations which nobody could enter or leave without
their authorization. They developed their own family and prop-
erty laws; they had freedom of contract and of social intercourse
among one another, and they imposed the expiation of breach
of peace within their group. But they had no other basis for
this close unit than the identity of the ruler whom they served,
who represented them to the outside, and who was their legal
agent in matters involving the law of the land. Here, as in the

192 Subordination under an Individual

case of religion mentioned before, the subordination under an
individual power is not the consequence or expression of an
already existing organic or interest group (as it is in many,
especially political, cases). On the contrary, the superordination
of one ruler is the cause of a commonness which in the absence
of it could not be attained and which is not predetermined by
any other relation among its members.

It should be noted that not only the equal, but often pre-
cisely the unequal, relation of the subordinates to the dominat-
ing head gives solidity to the social form characterized by sub-
ordination under one individual. The varying distance or close-
ness to the leader creates a differentiation which is not less firm
and articulate because the internal aspect of these relations to
him often is jealousy, repulsion, or haughtiness. The social level
of the individual Indian caste is determined by its relation to
the Brahman. The decisive questions are; Would the Brahman
accept a gift from one of their members? Would he accept a
glass of water from his hand without reluctance? Or with diffi-
culty? Or would he reject it with abhorrence? That the peculiar
firmness of caste stratification depends on such questions is char-
acteristic of the form under discussion for the reason that the
mere fact of a highest point determines, as a purely ideal factor,
the structural position of every element, and thus the structure
of the whole. That this highest layer should be occupied by a
great many individuals is quite irrelevant, since the sociological
form of the effect is here exactly like that of an individual: the
relation to the “Brahman” is decisive. In other words, the formal
characteristic of subordination under an individual may prevail
even where there is a plurality of superordinate individuals.
The specific sociological significance of such a plurality will be
shown later, in connection with other phenomena.

§ 3 . Unification of a Group in Opposition to the Ruler

The unificatory consequence of subordination under one
ruling power operates even when the group is in opposition to
this power. The political group, the factory, the school class,
the church congregation — all indicate how the culmination of
an organization in a head helps to effect the unity of the whole

Unification of a Group in Opposition to the Ruler 193

in the case of either harmony or discord. Discord, in fact, perhaps
even more stringently than harmony, forces the group to “pull
itself together.” In general, common enmity is one of the most
powerful means for motivating a number of individuals or
groups to cling together. This common enmity is intensified if
the common adversary is at the same time the common ruler.
In a latent, certainly not in an overt and effective, form, this
combination probably occurs everywhere: in some measure, in
some respect, the ruler is almost always an adversary. Man has
an intimate dual relation to the principle of subordination.
On the one hand, he wants to be dominated. The majority of
men not only cannot exist without leadership; they also feel that
they cannot: they seek the higher power which relieves them
of responsibility; they seek a restrictive, regulatory rigor which
protects them not only against the outside world but also against
themselves. But no less do they need opposition to the leading
power, which only through this opposition, through move and
countermove, as it were, attains the right place in the life pattern
of those who obey it.

One might even say that obedience and opposition are merely
two sides or links of one human attitude which fundamentally
is quite consistent. They are two sides that are oriented in dif-
ferent directions and only seem to be autonomous impulses.
The simplest illustration here is from the field of politics. No
matter of how many divergent and conflicting parties a nation
may be composed, it nevertheless has a common interest in
keeping the powers of the crown within limits or in restricting
them — in spite of all the practical irreplaceability of the crown
and even in spite of all sentimental attachment to it. For hun-
dreds of years following the Magna Charta, there was a lively
awareness in England that certain fundamental rights had to
be preserved and increased for all classes; that nobility could
not maintain its freedoms without the freedoms of the weaker
classes being maintained at the same time; and that only the
law which applied to nobility, burgher, and peasant alike repre-
sented a limitation of the personal reign. It has often been re-
marked that as long as this ultimate goal of the struggle — the
restrictions upon monarchy — is endangered, nobility always has
people and clergy on its side. And even where one-man rule

194 Subordination under an Individual

does not engender this sort of unification, at least it creates a
common arena for the fight of its subordinates — between those
who are for the ruler and those who are against him. There is
hardly a sociological structure, subject to a supreme head, in
which this pro and con does not occasion a vitality of inter-
actions and ramifications among the elements that in terms of
an eventual unification is greatly superior to many peaceful but
indifferent aggregates — in spite of all repulsions, frictions, and
costs of the fight.

§ 4 . Dissociating Effects of Subordination
under an Individual

The present discussion is not concerned with constructing
dogmatically one-sided series but with presenting basic proc-
esses whose infinitely varying extents and combinations often
cause their superficial manifestations to contradict one another.
It must therefore be emphasized that the common submission
to a ruling power by no means always leads to unification but,
if the submission occurs under certain conditions, to the very
opposite of it. For instance, English legislation directed a num-
ber of measures and exclusions concerning military service, the
right to vote, ownership, and government positions, against non-
conformists, that is, against Presbyterians, Catholics, and Jews
alike. The member of the state church thus used his prerogative
to give equal expression to his hatred of all these groups. But
this did not fuse the oppressed into a community of any sort;
on the contrary, the hatred of the Conformist was even surpassed
by the Presbyterian’s hatred of the Catholic, and of the Catholic’s
of the Presbyterian.

Here we seem to deal with a psychological “threshold phe-
nomenon.’’ There is a measure of enmity between social ele-
ments which becomes ineffectual if they experience a common
pressure: it then yields to external, if not internal, unification.
But if the original aversion surpasses a certain limit, a common
oppression has the opposite effect. This has two reasons. The
first is that once there is a dominating resentment in a certain
direction, any irritation, no matter from what source it may
come, only intensifies the general irritation and, contrary to all

The ^'Higher Tribunar 195

rational expectation, flows into the already existing river bed
and thereby enlarges it. The second, even more important reason
is that common suffering, though pressing the suffering elements
closer together, reveals all the more strikingly their inner dis-
tance and irreconcilability, precisely by virtue of this enforced
intimacy. Where unification, however it be created, cannot over-
come a given antagonism, it does not preserve this antagonism
at its former stage, but intensifies it. In all fields, contrast be-
comes sharper and more conscious in the measure in which the
parties concerned come closer together.

Another, more obvious kind of repulsion among the subjects
of a common ruler is created by means of jealousy. It constitutes
the negative counterpart of the phenomenon mentioned before,
namely, that common hatred is all the more powerful a bond
if the object of the common hatred is at the same time the com-
mon ruler. We now add that a love shared by a number of
elements makes them, by means of jealousy, all the more de-
cisively into mutual enemies if the common loved one is also
the common ruler. A student of Turkish conditions reports
that the children of different mothers in a harem are always
hostile to one another. The reason for this is the jealousy with
which their mothers observe the father's manifestations of love
for his children who are not their own. Jealousy takes on a
particular nuance as soon as it refers to the power which is
superordinate to both parties. Under this condition, the woman
winning the love of the disputed person triumphs over the rival
in a special sense, and has a special success of her power. The
subtlety of the fascination consists in the fact that she becomes
master over the rival inasmuch as she becomes master over the
rival's master. By means of the reciprocity within which the com-
monness of the master allows this fascination to develop, it must
lead to the highest intensification of jealousy.

§ 5. The ^^Higher Tribunar

I leave these dissociating consequences of subordination
under an individual power in order to return to its unifying
functions. I will only note how much more easily discords be-
tween parties are removed if the parties stand under the same

196 Subordination under an Individual

higher power than if each of them is entirely independent. How
many conflicts which were the ruin of both the Greek and Italian
city states would not have had this destructive consequence if
a central power, if some ultimate tribunal, had ruled over them
in commonl Where there is no such power, the conflict among
the elements has the fatal tendency to be fought out only in
face-to-face battle between the power quanta. In the most general
terms, we have to do here with the concept of '‘higher tribunal.’' ^
In varying forms, its operation extends through almost all of
human collective life. The question whether or not a given
society has a “higher tribunal” concerns a formal sociological
characteristic of first-rank importance. The “higher tribunal”
does not have to be a ruler in the ordinary or superficial sense
of the word. For instance, above the obligations and contro-
versies which are based on interests, instincts, and feelings, there
is always a “higher tribunal,” namely the realm of the intellec-
tual, with its particular contents or representatives. This tribu-
nal may make one-sided or inadequate decisions, and they may or
may not be obeyed. But just as above the contradictory contents
of our conceptions, logic remains the higher tribunal even where
we think non-logically, so in the same fashion, in a group that
is composed of many elements, the most intelligent individual
remains the higher tribunal in spite of the fact that in particular
cases it is rather the person of strong will or warm feeling that
may succeed in pacifying conflicts among the members. Never-
theless, the specific character of the “higher tribunal” to which
one appeals for decisions or whose interference one accepts be-
cause it is felt to be legitimate, is typically on the side of intel-
lectuality alone.

Another mode of unifying divergent parties, which is par-
ticularly favored if there exists a dominating “tribunal,” is the
following. Where it seems impossible to unify elements who
are either in conflict or remain indifferent and alien toward one
another — where they cannot be unified on the basis of the
qualities they have — the unification can sometimes be brought
about by so transforming the elements that they become adapted
to a new situation which permits harmony, or by causing them

^ '*Hdhere Instant’*: higher tribunal or court, but not necessarily in the tech-
nical, legal sense. — ^Tr.

Domination and Leveling 197

to acquire new qualities which make their unification possible.
The removal of ill-humor, the stimulation of mutual interest,
the creation of thoroughly common features, can often be
achieved (whether among children at play or among religious
or political parties) by adding to the existing dissociative or
indifferent intentions or delimitations of the elements some
new trait which serves as a point of contact and, thus, reveals
that even what was hitherto divergent can in fact be reconciled.
Furthermore, features that cannot be directly unified often
show the possibility of an indirect reconciliation if they can be
developed further or can be augmented by a new element, and
thus are placed upon a new and common basis. For instance,
the homogeneity of the Gallic Provinces was decisively pro-
moted when all of them in common became Latinized by Rome.
Obviously, it is precisely this mode of unification which needs
the ‘‘higher tribunal.§ ** Only a power which stands above the
parties and in some manner dominates them can, more or less
easily, give each of them interests and regulations which place
them on a common basis. If left to themselves, they would
perhaps never have found them; or their obstinacy, pride, and
perseverance in the conflict would have prevented them from
developing common interests. The Christian religion is praised
for making its adherents “peaceful.** The sociological reason
for this is very probably the feeling that all beings alike are
subordinate to the divine principle. The faithful Christian
is convinced that above him and above each of his adversaries,
whether Christian or not, there exists this “highest tribunal** —
and this frees him from the temptation to measure his strength
by violence. It is precisely because he stands immeasurably high
above each individual Christian that the Christian God can
be a bond among very large circles, all of which, by definition,
are included in his “peace.** At any given moment, each of
them, along with every other, has a “higher tribunal** in God.

§ 6. Domination and Leveling

Unification through common subordination occurs in two
different forms: by means of leveling and by means of grada-
tion. Insofar as a number of people are equally subject to one

198 Subordination under an Individual

individual, they are themselves equal. The correlation between
despotism and equalization has long been recognized. This
correlation occurs not only in the sense that the despot himself
tries to level his subjects (a point which will be discussed
presently), but also in the reverse sense that strongly developed
leveling easily leads to despotism. This is not true, however,
of every kind of ‘leveling/* In calling the Sicilian cities “filled
with motley masses,** Alcibiades wished to characterize them as
an easy prey for the conqueror. And, in fact, a homogeneous
citizenry offers a more successful resistance to tyranny than a
citizenry composed of highly divergent and hence unconnected
elements. The leveling most welcome to despotism, therefore,
is that of differences in rank, not in character. A society homo-
geneous in character and tendency, but organized in several
rank orders, resists despotism strongly, while a society in which
numerous kinds of characters exist side by side with organically
inarticulate equality, resists it only slightly.

The ruler*s chief motive in equalizing hierarchical differ-
ences derives from the fact that relations of strong superordina-
tion and subordination among his subjects actually and psycho-
logically compete with his own superordination. Besides, too
great an oppression of certain classes by others is as dangerous
to despotism as is the too great power of these oppressing classes.
For, a revolt of the suppressed against the oppressive class, which
is intermediate between them and the despot, can easily be
directed against the highest power itself, as if the movement
rolled on merely by following its own inertia — unless the despot
himself leads the movement, or at least supports it. Oriental
despots, therefore, have tried to prevent the formation of
aristocracies — as, for instance, the Turkish Sultan, who thus
preserved his radical, entirely un-mediated eminence over the
totality of his subjects. Every power in the state, of whatever
description, derived from him and returned to him with the
death of its owner; and thus there never developed an aristoc-
racy of any significance. The absolute sublimity of the sovereign
and the leveling of the subjects were realized as correlated
phenomena.

This tendency is also reflected in the fact that despots only
love servants of average talent, as has been noted particularly

Domination and Leveling 199

of Napoleon I. In a similar fashion, when it was suggested to
an outstanding German official that he transfer to another
branch of the government, the ruling prince is supposed to
have asked his minister: “Is the man indispensable to us?”
“Entirely so, Your Highness.” “Then we shall let him go. I can-
not use indispensable servants.” Yet, despotism does not seek
particularly inferior servants; and, in this, it shows its inner
relation to leveling. Tacitus says in regard to the tendency of
Tiberius to employ mediocre officials: “ex optimis periculum
sibij a pessimis dedecus publicum metuebat” ® Quite charac-
teristically, where one-man rule does not have the character of
despotism, this tendency to employ inferior servants is at once
much weaker, if indeed it does not yield to its opposite. Thus,
Bismarck said of William I that the emperor not only accepted
a respected and powerful servant, but even felt himself elevated
by this fact.

Where the ruler does not categorically prevent the develop-
ment of intermediate powers (as in the Sultan’s case), he often
tries to create a relative leveling: he favors the efforts of the
lower classes which are directed toward legal equality with these
intermediate powers. Medieval and recent history offers many
examples of this. Ever since Norman times, English royalty has
vigorously practiced the correlation between its own omnipo-
tence and the legal equality of its subjects. By forcing every
lower vassal to swear feudal duty directly to himself, William
the Conqueror broke the bond which, in England as on the
Continent, had existed between the directly enfeoffed aristocracy
and the lower vassals. This measure prevented the great crown
fiefs from developing into sovereignties, and, on the other hand,
it laid down the bases of a uniform legislation for all classes.
The English kings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries based
their extraordinary power upon the regularity with which free
property, without any exceptions, was subject to military, court,
police, and tax duty. The Roman Empire shows the same form.
The Republic had become incapable of existence because the
legal and actual superiority of the city of Rome over Italy and
the Provinces could no longer be maintained. Only the Empire

5 “From the best, he feared danger to himself; from the worst, public shame.“
— Tr.

200 Subordination under an Individual

resurrected the balance; it did so by making the Romans as
powerless as were the peoples whom they had subjugated. In this
fashion, an impartial legislation for all citizens, a legal leveling,
was made possible; and its correlate was the absolute exaltation
and uniqueness of the ruler.

It need hardly be mentioned that “leveling” must always be
understood here as a wholly relative tendency with very limited
possibilities of realization. A basic science of the forms of society
must present concepts and concept complexes in a purity and
abstract completeness which are never shown by the historical
realizations of their contents. Yet sociological understanding
aims at grasping the fundamental concept of sociation in its
particular significances and formations; it aims at analyzing
phenomenal complexes into their minute factors to the point
of approaching inductive regularities. It can do so only
through the auxiliary construction of so-to-speak absolute lines
and figures which in actual social life are found only as be-
ginnings and fragments, as partial realizations that are con-
stantly interrupted and modified. In every single social-historical
configuration, there operates a number of reciprocities among
the elements, which can probably never be wholly enumerated.
We can no more dissolve its form, as it is given, into its com-
ponent factors, and then recombine these factors, than we can
create out of the ideal figures of our geometry the absolutely
identical shape of any piece of matter whatever — in spite of the
fact that in principle both must be possible by means of dif-
ferentiating and combining scientific constructs. Sociological
cognition so transforms historical phenomena that their unity
is decomposed into a number of concepts and syntheses which
are defined in a purely one-sided manner and which run, as it
were, in a straight line. As a rule, one of these catches the main
characteristic of the historical phenomenon under analysis. By
bending and limiting each other mutually, all of them together
project its image with increasing exactness upon the new plane
of abstraction. The Sultan’s reign over subjects who have no
rights; that of the English king over a people that already a
hundred and fifty years after William the Conqueror coura-
geously rose against King John; that of the Roman Emperor
who, properly speaking, was only the overseer of the more or

Domination and Leveling 201

less autonomous communities which made up the Empire: all
these one-man rules are as profoundly different from one an-
other as are the corresponding “levelings** of their subjects.
And yet, the motive of this correlation operates alike in all of
them; the immense differences among the immediate material
phenomena leaves room for the ideal line, so to speak, with
which this correlation is traced into them. In its purity and
regularity, however, this correlation is a scientificr abstract
construct.

The same tendency of domination by means of leveling is
sometimes disguised by phenomena which on the surface look
like the very opposite of those thus far considered. Philip the
Good of Burgundy behaved very typically when he aimed at
suppressing the freedom of the Dutch cities but, at the same
time, bestowed very comprehensive privileges upon many in-
dividual corporations. These legal differences were created
exclusively by the arbitrary pleasure of the ruler. They thus
marked all the more distinctly the common, unalterable sub-
ordination of his subjects. In the particular case mentioned,
this is excellently shown by the fact that, although the privileges
were very extensive in terms of their content, they were of only
a short duration: the legal advantage was thus never separated
from the source from which it came. The privilege, seemingly
the very opposite of leveling, thus reveals itself as the intensifi-
cation of leveling, which adopts it as the correlate of absolute
subjugation.

Rule-by-one has innumerable times been reproached for
the contradiction which is supposed to lie in the purely quan-
titative disproportion between the one-ness of the ruler and
the many-ness of the ruled. It has been accused of the undig-
nified and unjust character of the ratio of what the two parties
to the relationship invest in it. As a matter of fact, the resolu-
tion of this contradiction reveals a very peculiar, basic socio-
logical constellation, which has important consequences. The
point is that the structure of a society in which only one person
rules while the great mass lets itself be ruled, makes normative
sense only by virtue of a specific circumstance: that the mass,
the ruled element, injects only parts of all the personalities
which compose it into the mutual relationship, whereas the

202 Subordination under an Individual

ruler contributes all of his personality. The ruler and the
individual subject do not enter the relationship with the same
quanta of their personalities. The ‘‘mass'' is formed through
a process by which a great many individuals unite parts of their
personalities — specific impulses, interests, forces — ^while what
each personality really is, remains outside this common level.
It does not enter the “mass"; it does not enter that which is
actually ruled by the one individual.

It need not be emphasized that this new ratio which balances
the full personality quantum of the ruler with the many partial
quanta of the ruled gains its quantitative form only as a sym-
bolic makeshift expression. Personality itself is completely out-
side any arithmetic concept. Therefore, when we speak of the
“whole" personality, of its “unity," of a “part" of it, we intend
to convey something qualitative and intimate, something which
can be experienced only through intuition. We have no direct
expression for it, so that these other expressions, taken as they
are from a totally different order of things, are quite inade-
quate — but, of course, they are nonetheless indispensable. The
whole rulership relation between the one and the many — and
evidently not only in the case of political domination — is based
on this decomposition of personality.

The application of this decomposition within the field of
superordination and subordination is merely a special case of
its significance for all interaction whatever. Even in regard to
such a close union as marriage, it must be pointed out that one
is never “wholly" married. Even in the best case, one is married
only with part of one's personality, however great this part be —
even as one is never wholly a citizen of a city, wholly an eco-
nomic man, wholly a church member.

This division within the individual — which is the basis for
the subjugation of the many by the one — ^was already recognized
by Grotius. Grotius countered the objection that the power of
the ruler cannot be acquired by purchase since it concerns free
men, by distinguishing between private and public subjection.
In contrast to subjectio privata, subjectio publica does not
eliminate sui juris esse.^ When a people is sold, the object of
the sale are not the individuals but only jus eos regendi, qua

« The autonomy (of the individual). — ^Tr.

Domination and Leveling 203

populus sunt [the right of ruling them, insofar as they are a
people]. It is one of the highest tasks of political art — of church
politics, family politics, politics in general — to learn to recognize
and, as it were, chemically prepare, those sides of man with
which he forms the more or less leveled ‘'mass*' and above which
the ruler can tower at a height that is alike for all members of
the mass. These he needs to distinguish from those other sides
that must be left to the freedom of the individual — although
it is only the conjunction of both which make up the whole per-
sonality of the subject.

Groups are characteristically different according to the pro-
portion between the members* total personalities and those parts
of their personalities with which they fuse in the ‘‘mass.** The
measure of their governability depends on this difference in
quanta. More precisely, a group can be dominated by one in-
dividual the more easily and radically, the smaller the portion
of the total personality that the member contributes to that
mass which is the object of subordination. Where, on the other
hand, the social unit covers so much of the component per-
sonalities; where they are so closely interwoven with the group
as was true of the inhabitants of the Greek city states or of the
burghers of medieval cities, government-by-one becomes some-
thing contradictory and impracticable.

But this essentially simple, basic relationship is complicated
by two factors. One is the magnitude or smallness of the sub-
ordinate group, and the other is the differentiation of the indi-
vidual personality. Other things being equal, the larger the
group, the smaller is the range of ideas and interests, sentiments
and other characteristics in which its members coincide and
form a “mass.** Therefore, insofar as the domination of the
members extends to their common features, the individual
member bears it the more easily, the larger his group. Thus, in
this respect, the essential nature of one-man rule is shown very
clearly: the more there are of those over whom the one rules,
the slighter is that portion of every individual which he
dominates. But secondly, it is extremely important whether the
individuals have, or do not have, a psychological structure suf-
ficiently differentiated to separate, in their practice and in their
feelings, the elements which lie within and without the sphere

204 Subordination under an Individual

of domination. This differentiation must coincide with the art
of the ruler, noted earlier, with which he himself distinguishes
those elements within each of his subordinates that are acces-
sible to domination from those which are not. It is only when
the two coincide that the contradiction between domination
and freedom, the disproportionate preponderance of the one
over the many, is resolved — at least approximately. If this is the
case, individuality can freely develop even in despotically ruled
groups. The formation of modern individuality began, in fact,
in the despotisms of the Italian Renaissance. Here as in other
cases, for instance, under Napoleon I, the ruler was interested
in granting the greatest freedom to all those sides of the per-
sonality in regard to which the individual does not belong to
the ‘‘mass,'* which are, that is, removed from the area of political
domination.

In very small groups, the closeness of fusion and the all-
pervasive inner and outer solidarities among the members, again
and again cut across these two types of personality aspects, and
let them grow together, as it were, in a wrong way. It is under-
standable that, in this case, government can very easily become
an unbearable tyranny. Thus, the relation between parents
and children becomes frequently most unsatisfactory because
of this smallness of the group, often accompanied by the clumsi-
ness of the persons involved. Parents often make the grave mis-
take of imposing, in a very authoritarian fashion, a life schema
upon their children which is supposed to be valid for every-
body — even in those matters in which the children are irrecon-
cilably individual. The same error is committed by the priest
who, beyond the sphere within which he can unify his con-
gregants, also wishes to dominate those spheres of their private
lives in which, from the standpoint of the religious community,
they are certainly differentiated as individuals. In all these
cases, those parts of the character which are suited for “mass’*
formation and whose subjugation, therefore, is easily borne
as something legitimate, are not properly isolated.

The leveling of the mass thus results from the separation
and combination of those elements within each of its com-
ponent individuals which can be subjected to the ruler. This
leveling is of the greatest significance for the sociology of domi-

Domination and Leveling 205

nation \Herrschaft\. In conjunction with what has been said
earlier, it explains why it is often easier to dominate a larger
than a smaller group. This is true particularly if the group is
made up of highly differentiated individuals: each new one of
them further reduces the range of features common to all. If the
group is composed of such personalities (other things being
equal), the leveling plane of many is lower than that of few,
and thus their governability is greater. Here lies the sociological
basis of Hamilton’s remark, in the Federalist, that it is a great
popular error to wish to increase the guaranties “against the
government of a few” by augmenting the number of members
of the parliament. Above a certain number, he continues, popu-
lar representation may appear to be more democratic, but ac-
tually is more oligarchical: “The machine may be enlarged,
but the fewer will be the springs by which its motions are
directed.” And a hundred years later, but in the same vein, one
of the foremost students of Anglo-American party life pointed
out that the higher a party leader rises in power and influence,
the most strictly is he bound to perceive “by how few persons
the world is governed.”

Here, also, lies the deeper sociological significance of the
close relation which exists between the law of a political unit
and its ruler. The law which is valid for all is based on the
points in which all coincide; these points lie beyond the purely
individual life contents or forms of the members or, viewed
differently, beyond the totality of the individual. Such super-
individual elements of having and being, such interests and
qualities, attain an objective, synthesizing form in law — in the
same way in which they find their subjective form, or their
correlate, in the ruler of the political unit. If this peculiar
analysis and synthesis within the individual is the general basis
of rule-by-one, it also explains that sometimes an astonishingly
slight measure of excellence is sufficient to win dominance over
a collectivity. It explains why the collectivity should subordinate
itself with an ease which a qualitative comparison between the
total personalities of the ruler and his subjects could not logi-
cally justify. Yet where the differentiation of individuals, which
is necessary for the domination of a mass, is lacking, the re-
quirements for the quality of the ruler go beyond this modest

206 Subordination under an Individual

measure. Aristotle said that in his time legitimate monarchies
could no longer arise; for now, he wrote, there are so many
equally excellent personalities in every state that no one of
them can claim such an advantage above all others. Evidently,
the Greek citizen was so closely connected in his interests and
feelings with the political whole, and had contributed his
total personality to the general life in such a measure, that a
factoring-out of his exclusively ‘‘politicaF' parts was no longer
possible. He could not have withheld from them an essential
part of his personality, as his private possession. If this is the
situation, monarchy indeed presupposes for its inner legitima-
tion that the ruler be superior to the total personality of every
subject. On the other hand, this is a requirement of which
there can be no question where the object of his domination
is only the sum of factored-out, ‘‘mass-combined” parts of the
subordinates.

§ 7. Domination and Downward Gradation

In addition to this type of domination by one individual,
whose correlate is the fundamental leveling of his subjects,
there is a second type, in which the group takes on the form
of a pyramid. The subordinates face the ruler in gradations
of power. Layers whose volume becomes ever smaller and whose
significance becomes ever greater lead from the lowest mass to
the top of the pyramid. This group form can develop in two
ways. It may originate in the full autocratic power of the ruler,
who loses the content of this power and lets it glide downward,
while its form and title continue to exist. In this process, the
layers closest to him naturally retain more of his power than
do the more remote ones. This gradual downward penetration
of power must result in a continuity and gradation of super-
ordinates and subordinates, unless other events and conditions
interfere with this process and deform it. This, presumably, is
the way in which social forms frequently originate in oriental
states. The power of the highest echelons withers, either because
it is internally untenable and does not preserve the proportion
between submission and individual freedom which was em-
phasized above, or because the personalities involved are too

Domination and Downward Gradation 207

indolent and too ignorant of the technique of government to
maintain their power.

The pyramidal form of society has a very different character
when it originates in the intention of the ruler, so that it indi-
cates no weakening of his power but, on the contrary, its exten-
sion and consolidation. Here, therefore, the power quantum of
domination is not distributed among the lower layers; rather,
these layers are being organized with respect to one another in
degrees of power and position. The total quantum of subordina-
tion remains, as it were, the same as in the case of leveling; it
only adopts another form, that of inequality among the indi-
viduals who must bear it. Nevertheless, in appearance, the
elements here approach the ruler in the measure of their relative
ranks. This can result in a great solidity of the total structure:
the forces which support its weight flow more securely and in
a more concentrated form toward its apex than they do if they
are all on one level. The superior significance of the prince and,
more generally, of the individual who rates highest in any given
group, transcends him and is transferred to the others in the
measure in which they are close to him; and this is no
diminution of his superiority, but a heightening of it.

During the nearly English period of the Normans, the King
had no permanent, obligatory council whatever. But in more
important cases, in consequence of the very dignity and sig-
nificance of his regime, he did seek the advice of a consilium
baronum. That is, the dignity which seems to have attained
its highest degree by being concentrated in his personality,
needed radiation and enlargement nevertheless, as if it did not
find enough room in a single person, although it was only the
King’s own dignity. He called others in to cooperate with
him; these others, who helped him carry his power and sig-
nificance and thus actually shared them somehow, reflected them
back upon him in a fashion which, thus, was all the more con-
centrated and effective. Even earlier we find that the attendant
of the Anglo-Saxon king has an especially high wergild and
a particularly high importance as the king’s cojuror; and that
his groom and the man in whose house he takes a drink are
elevated above the mass by special legal protection. These
measures do not simply belong to the prerogative of the king;

208 Subordination under an Individual

instead, the graded descent of the prerogative, which, viewed
from below, is an ascent, at the same time greatly supports
this prerogative itself. By being shared, the king’s superiority
becomes more, not less. Furthermore, in a system of such fine
gradations, the ruler has at his disposal rewards and distinc-
tions in the form of rank promotions, which cost him nothing
but which bind the promoted individuals all the more closely
to him. This tendency seems to have directly determined the
great number of social echelons created by the Roman Em-
pire — an almost continuous scale, from the slaves and the
humilioreSj through the ordinary freemen, to the senators.

In this respect, aristocracy is formally identical with royalty:
it, too, uses a many-leveled organization of its subjects. As late
as the middle of the eighteenth century, for instance, there
were numerous gradations of rights among the citizens of
Geneva, according to whether they were citoyens, bourgeois,
habitants, natifs, or sujets. Inasmuch as the largest possible num-
ber of people have still some others below them, all but the
lowest are interested in the maintenance of the existing order.
In such cases, however, there often is less a gradation of real
power than a predominantly ideal ranking by titles and posi-
tions. Yet the extent to which even this can develop very con-
siderable consequences is perhaps most strikingly shown by the
subtle gradations among the dozens of classes in the Indian caste
system. Even if such a pyramid built up of honors and social
advantages culminates in the ruler, it does not always coincide,
by any means, with the formally identical structure of graded,
real power positions, which may coexist along with it.

The structure of a power pyramid always suffers from the
basic difficulty that the irrational and fluctuating qualities of
the persons are never entirely congruent with the delimitations
of the various positions which are pre-designed in it with almost
logical exactness. This formal difficulty is characteristic of all
rank orders that are pre-shaped according to a given scheme.
It is a problem not only of organizations headed by a personal
ruler, but also of socialist proposals with their confidence that
certain institutions will actually bring the individuals who de-
serve leading and superordinate positions into these positions.
In both cases, there is this basic incommensurability between

Domination and Upward Gradation 209

the schematism of the positions and the intrinsically variable
nature of man, which never precisely fits conceptually fixed
forms.

But there is a further difficulty, namely, that of recognizing
the personality suited for a given position. The main reason for
this is that, whether or not somebody deserves a certain power
position is, innumerable times, revealed only once he occupies
it. Every employment of a person for exercising a new power or
function always involves a risk, always remains an experiment,
which may succeed or fail, even when the employment follows
the most thorough examination and the most indisputable ante-
cedents. This risk is woven into the deepest, most precious
aspects of human nature. Our very relationship to the world
and to life forces us to make decisions beforehand; to bring
about, that is, through our decision, those circumstances which
should properly have been brought about and known in order
to enable us to make the decision reasonably and securely. In
the development of social power scales, this general, a priori
difficulty of all human action emerges, evidently, with particular
force when these scales do not grow, so to speak, organically
out of the individual’s own forces and the natural conditions
of the society, .but are spontaneously constructed by a ruling
personality. To be sure, historically this case probably never
exists in absolute purity — at most, it finds a parallel in the
socialist utopias mentioned above. But it shows its characteris-
tics and complications even where, in reality, it can be observed
only in rudimentary and mixed forms.

§ 8. Domination and U pward Gradation

The other way in which a graduated scale of power extend-
ing to the highest rung can develop runs in the opposite direc-
tion. Some elements of a collectivity which in the beginning is
composed of relatively equal members, gain greater significance;
and out of the totality of these, some other, particularly power-
ful individuals, again become differentiated, and so forth; until
the development terminates in one or a few supreme heads.
Here the pyramid of superordination and subordinations is
built from below. This process needs no examples since it occurs

210 Subordination under an Individual

everywhere, even though with a variety of rhythms. It is perhaps
most purely exemplified in the fields of economics and politics,
but is also very notable in the area of intellectual culture, in
school classes, in the development of attitudes toward life,
in aesthetic respects, and in the initial growth of military
organization.

§ 9 . Mixture of Downward and U pward Gradation

The two ways in which a graduated superordination and
subordination of groups can develop may, in actuality, be
mixed. The classical example of this is the medieval feudal
state. As long as the full citizen, whether Greek, Roman, or old-
Germanic, was not subordinated to an individual, he enjoyed
full equality with all other citizens; and, on the other hand, he
closed himself thoroughly against all who stood below him. This
characteristic social form passed through numerous historical
links, until it found, in feudalism, its equally characteristic
opposite. Feudalism fills the chasm between freedom and un-
freedom by a rank order of statuses. “Service,” servitium^ tied
all members of the realm to one another and to the king. The
king gave of his property in the same way in which his great
subjects, in their turn, enfeoffed the vassals, their subordinates,
with land, so that a graded order of positions, possessions, and
obligations developed. But this same result was reached by the
social process which started from the opposite end. The inter-
mediate layers developed not only through power distribution
from the top but also through accumulation from below.
Originally free but small land owners gave their land to more
powerful lords in order to receive it back as feudal tenures.
At the same time, these landlords more and more increased their
power, against which the weakened royalty could not stand up,
and in those of their representatives that had advanced highest
toward the top, themselves attained royal power.

The form of such a pyramid gives every one of its elements
a twofold position between the lowest and the highest layers.
Everybody is superordinate and everybody is subordinate; he
is dependent on the top and, at the same time, is independent
insofar as others are dependent upon him. This sociological am-

Mixture of Downward and Upward Gradation 211

biguity of feudalism very strongly accentuated its dual genesis
and was accentuated by it — the genesis through giving from
above and through accumulation from below. The ambiguity,
perhaps, accounts for the contradictory consequences of feu-
dalism. According to whether consciousness and practice em-
phasized the independence or the dependence of the inter-
mediate layers, feudalism tended to hollow out the power of the
supreme ruler, as it did in Germany, or bestowed an all-
pervasive power upon the crown, as in England.

Gradation belongs among those forms of group life and
organization which are based upon a quantitative viewpoint.
It is therefore more or less mechanical, and historically precedes
properly organic groupings, which are based on qualitative dif-
ferences among individuals. Nevertheless, the quantitative
foundation is not simply replaced by the qualitative principle,
but continues to exist side by side and in synthesis with it.
Here must be noted, above all, the division of the group into
subgroups. The social role of subgroups is rooted in their
numerical equality or (at least) in their numerical determina-
tion, as, for instance, in the case of division by Hundred.
Here, further, belongs the allocation of social position merely
according to property owned. Finally, here belongs group for-
mation by means of fixed degrees, as it is shown, above all, in
feudalism, in ecclesiastical hierarchy, in bureaucracy, and in
the army. Already the first example of this form, feudalism, sug-
gests its peculiar objectivity and axiomatic character. It is
through this that feudalism, as it developed since the beginnings
of the Germanic Middle Ages, broke through the old orders of
free and unfree, noble and plebeian, which were based on dif-
ferences in the individual's relation to the group. Above these
old orders, there arose a generally valid principle, “service," that
is, the objective necessity of everybody serving, in some fashion,
a superior individual; and the only difference admitted was
the question of who the superior was and under what conditions
he was served. The resultant, essentially quantitative gradation
of positions was often quite independent of the earlier group
positions of the individuals.

It is, of course, not necessary that this organization ascend
to a head which is highest in the absolute sense of the word.

212 Subordination under an Individual

Its formal nature is revealed, actually, by every group, no matter
how the group as a whole be characterized. Already Roman
slavery was most minutely graduated in this sense, from the
villicus and procurator, who independently directed whole
branches of production in the great slave industries, through
all kinds of classifications, down to the foreman of ten workers.
Such a form of organization has a great sensory visibility, as it
were. Since every member of it is both superordinated and sub-
ordinated, and thus is fixed in two directions, the organization
gives him a definite, sociological determination of his life feel-
ing, and this feeling, as closeness and solidity of cohesion, is
bound to project itself upon the whole group. For this reason,
despotic or reactionary movements, for fear of unifications
among their subjects, sometimes persecute hierarchically or-
ganized unifications with particular zeal. The decree issued in
1831 by the reactionary English Ministry goes into peculiar
details which can be understood only if the specific socializing
power of super-subordination is appreciated. The decree pro-
hibited all associations “composed of separate bodies, with
various divisions and subdivisions, under leaders with a grada-
tion of rank and authority, and distinguished by certain badges,
and subject to the general control and direction of a superior
council. “

It should be noted that this form must be sharply dis-
tinguished from another, in which superordination and sub-
ordination are simultaneous. In this case, an individual is super-
ordinate on one scale or in one respect, but is subordinate in
another. This arrangement has more of an individual and
qualitative character. It is usually a combination which derives
from the particular disposition or fate of the individual. Super-
ordination and subordination on one and the same scale, on the
other hand, is much more objectively pre-formed and, for this
reason, is a more unambiguous and definite sociological posi-
tion. The fact that this form, too, is of great cohesive value for
the social scale itself, as I noted a moment ago, is related to
the circumstance that it makes the individual’s rise in the scale
a “given” aim for his endeavor. In Freemasonry, for instance,
this motivation, as a purely formal one, has been used for pre-
serving the “degrees.” Already the “apprentice” learns all essen-

Strength and Perserverance of Domination by One 213

tials of the objective knowledge (here, ritual knowledge) of the
“journeyman** and “master** degrees. But it is pointed out that
these stages give the order a certain elasticity and animation
through the stimulus of novelty, and that they promote the
endeavor of the novice.

§ 10 . Strength and Perseverance of Domination by One

All sociological structures discussed thus far are equally
determined by the superordination of one person, no matter
how different the contents of the groups concerned. But evi-
dently, such structures can also emerge in case of subordination
under a number of individuals, as I have already indicated. If
these superordinate individuals are coordinated with one an-
other, the question whether the superordinate position of one
is, incidentally, occupied by a plurality of persons, is not de-
cisive, and is therefore sociologically irrelevant. It should be
emphasized, however, that domination by one is the primary
type and form of the relationship of subordination in general.
This fundamental position of it within the whole complex of
super-subordination makes it understandable that, within its
sphere, it may legitimately give room to other kinds of orders,
oligarchical and republican, and not only in the political sense
of these terms. It makes it understandable that the sphere domi-
nated by the monarch may very well include secondary struc-
tures of these other types, while, where the latter are the supreme
and most comprehensive structures, monarchy can find only a
small or illegitimate niche.

Monarchy has such a sensuous appeal, is so impressive, that
it lives forth even in those constitutions that originated as a
reaction to it and were designed as instruments of its abolition.
It has been said of the American President, as well as of the
Athenian Archon and the Roman Consul, that, with certain limi-
tations, they are after all only the heirs of the royal powers of
which the kings were deprived through the various revolutions.
Some Americans themselves tell us that their freedom consists
only in the alternation of government by the two great parties,
each of which exerts a tyranny in an entirely monarchical man-
ner. The attempt, furthermore, has been made to show that

214 Subordination under an Individual

the democracy of the French revolution is nothing but royalty
turned upside down, and equipped with the same qualities.
Rousseau’s ''volont^ genirale” to which, he teaches, every-
body must submit without resistance, has entirely the character
of the absolute monarch. And Proudhon notes that a parlia-
ment which is the result of universal suffrage is not distinguish-
able from him. The popular representative, he argues, is
infallible, inviolable, irresponsible — and the monarch, essen-
tially, is no more than this. The monarchical principle, he con-
tinues, is as lively and complete in a parliament as in a legiti-
mate king. As a matter of fact, in the relations to a parliament,
the phenomenon of flattery is not absent, although this, above
all others, seems to be specifically reserved for relations to a
single individual.

It is quite characteristic that a formal relationship among
group elements continues to prevail even after a change of
their whole sociological tendency seems to make this impossible.
It is the peculiar strength of domination by one person to sur-
vive its own death, as it were — by transferring its own color to
structures whose very significance is the negation of such domi-
nation. This is one of the most striking cases which illustrate
the autonomous life of sociological forms. By virtue of it, they
not only can absorb materially different contents, but can also
inject into changed forms the very spirit that is the opposite
of these forms. The formal significance of domination by one
is so great that it is explicitly preserved where its content is
negated, and precisely because it is negated. The dogedom of
Venice lost more and more of its power until eventually, for
all practical purposes, it possessed none whatever. In spite of
this, it was preserved most anxiously in order to make develop-
ments impossible which might have brought a real ruler upon
the throne. The process here is not for the opposition to destroy
domination by one, in an effort to consolidate itself in this
same form, but to preserve it, in order to prevent its real con-
solidation. The two, actually contradictory processes attest alike
to the formal strength of this form of domination.

As a matter of fact, the contrasts which monarchy forces
together are contained in one and the same phenomenon.
Monarchy is interested in the monarchic institution even where

Strength and Perseverance of Domination by One 215

this institution lies outside the immediate influence sphere of
the monarch. The experience that all realizations of a certain
social form, however divergent, support one another and, as it
were, mutually guarantee the form they realize, seems to apply
to very different conditions of domination, most decisively to
aristocracy and monarchy. For this reason, a monarchy some-
times has to pay heavily if, for certain political reasons, it
weakens the monarchic principle in another country. Mazarin’s
regime met with almost rebellious resistance from both people
and parliament. This resistance has been explained in terms of
the fact that French politics had supported rebellions in neigh-
boring countries against their governments. In this way, the
explanation continues, the monarchic principle received a blow
which acted back on the originator, who had thought he could
safeguard his interest by means of those rebellions. Inversely,
when Cromwell refused the title of king, the Royalists were sad-
dened. For, however unbearable the thought must have been to
them of seeing the murderer of the king on the throne, they
would, nevertheless, have greeted the mere fact that once more
there was a king as preparing the way for the Restoration.

But the effect of monarchic sentiment goes beyond such
utilitarian justifications of expanding the monarchy on the
grounds of anticipated consequences. In regard to certain phe-
nomena, the monarchic sentiment even has an effect which is
to the personal disadvantage of those who harbor it. When,
under the regime of Louis XIV, the Portuguese rebellion
against Spain broke out, a rebellion which must have been en-
tirely desirable to the King of France, he nevertheless remarked:
“However bad a prince may be, the rebellion of his subjects is
always infinitely criminal.” And Bismarck tells us that William I
felt an “instinctive, monarchic disinclination” toward Bennig-
sen and his earlier activity in Hanover. For, irrespective of what
Bennigsen and his party (Bismarck notes) had done for the
Prussianization of Hanover, this behavior of a subject toward
his original (Guelphic) dynasty was contrary to William's senti-
ments as a ruler. The inner strength of monarchy is great enough
to include in its pervasive sympathy even its enemy and, on the
other hand, very deeply to oppose its friend, as if he were an
adversary, once he puts himself in opposition to any king what-

216 Subordination under an Individual

ever, although, personally, this opposition may be very useful
to a particular monarch.

§ 11 . Subordination of the Group to a Member or
to an Outsider

Finally, features of a kind not yet touched upon at all emerge,
if between superordinates and subordinates there exists, in some
respect, equality or inequality, closeness or distance, which be-
comes problematical. An essential trait of the sociological form
of a group is its preference for subordination to a stranger or
to somebody from its own midst; its conception of the expe-
diency and dignity of the one or the other kind of subordination.
In Germany, medieval feudal barons had originally the right to
nominate whatever judges and leaders from the outside they
chose to call to their manors. Eventually, however, the conces-
sion was often made to the manor that officials had to be taken
from among the bondsmen. In exactly the opposite sense, it was
considered a particularly important assurance which the Count
of Flanders made to his '‘beloved jurors and burghers of Ghent”
in 1228, an assurance to the effect that the judge and executive
officer to be appointed by him, as well as their subalterns, could
not be chosen from Ghent and could not be married to local
women.

The difference between these two cases, of course, has utili-
tarian reasons: the stranger is more impartial; the member is
more understanding. The first reason evidently was decisive for
the request of the Ghent citizens; for the same reason, as has
already been mentioned, Italian cities often chose their judges
from other cities and thus secured themselves against the in-
fluence of family connections and inner factions upon the legal
system. It was the same motive which moved such clever rulers
as Louis XI and Mathias Corvinus to take, if possible, their
highest officials from abroad, or from the lower classes. As late
as in the nineteenth century, Bentham suggested another utili-
tarian consideration of the fact that foreigners are often the best
state officials: they are watched with more suspicion than any-
body else.

The preference for more closely related or similar individ-

Subordination of the Group to a Member 217

uals strikes one as less paradoxical. But it may lead to a pecu-
liarly mechanical conception of the axiom of similia similibus.
This is reported of an ancient Libyan tribe, and recently of the
Ashanti, where the king rules over the men, and the queen —
who is his sister — over the women. I have already emphasized
the cohesion of the group as the result of its subordination to
one of its members. It is exactly this cohesion which is confirmed
by the phenomenon of the central power that seeks to break
through the autonomous jurisdiction of subgroups. The idea
that one's local community is one’s legitimate judge was still
widely diffused in fourteenth-century England. But Richard II
decreed that nobody could be a judge of assize or of “gaol de-
livery’’ in his own county. In this case, the correlate of group
cohesion was the freedom of religion. Likewise, during the decay
of Anglo-Saxon royalty, the decision by associates or peers was
highly esteemed as a defense against the arbitrariness of royal
and princely constables. And the severely burdened feudal
peasant jealously held on to this arrangement as to his last pos-
session which gave content and value to the idea of freedom
as an individual right.

Thus, certainly, rational grounds of objective expediency
determine the choice of subordination under the fellow member
or under the stranger. Yet the motives of this choice are not
exhausted under the category of expediency. There are also
other motives, more instinctive and emotional, as well as more
abstract and indirect. These, in fact, are bound to exist because
rational grounds alone may be as much in favor of the one as
of the other of the two choices. The greater understanding of
the fellow member and the greater objectivity of the outsider
may often balance one another, and, therefore, another criterion
is needed for deciding between the two. We here encounter the
phychological antinomy that, on the one hand, we are attracted
by what is like us, and, on the other, by what is unlike us. This
antinomy is extremely important for sociological formation in
general. The question regarding the cases and spheres in which
the one or the other becomes effective, and the question regard-
ing the tendency toward which the whole personality leans,
seem to belong to the individual’s absolutely primary charac-
teristics which inhere in his very nature. The contrasting ele-

218 Subordination under an Individual

ment complements us; the similar element strengthens us.
Contrast excites and stimulates; similarity reassures. Both,
though by very different means, give us the feeling that our
particular existence is legitimate. But where we feel that the
one is appropriate in regard to a particular phenomenon, the
other repels us. Contrast then appears hostile, while similarity
bores us. Contrast presents us with too high a challenge; simi-
larity, with too low a task. It is difficult in regard to either to find
a tenable position: there, because we have no points of contact
and comparison; here, because we feel that what is similar to
us, or, what is worse, that we ourselves, are superfluous.

Essentially, the inner variety of our connections with an
individual (but also with a group) is based upon the fact that
these connections present us with a number of aspects with
which we have to establish a relationship. In us, these traits cor-
respond partly with like features, partly with heterogeneous
ones, and both correspondences make attraction as well as re-
pulsion possible. In their play and counter-play and in their
combinations, the total relationship takes its course. The essen-
tial affinity of another individual, for instance, may release in
us sympathetic feelings in one respect, and antipathetic feelings
in another. A social power, therefore, favors similar powers in
its own province not only because of the natural sympathy for
ideal affinities, but because the strengthening of the principle
common to all is necessarily beneficial to it, too. On the other
hand, however, jealousy, competition, and the desire to be the
only representative of the principle have the opposite effect.
This is very notable in the relation between monarchy and
nobility. The hereditary principle of nobility is intimately shared
by monarchy. For this reason, monarchy sides with nobility, is
supported by it, and hence favors it. Often, however, it cannot
tolerate a class which is privileged by heredity, that is, in its
own right, to exist side by side with it; it necessarily wishes for
every individual to receive its privileges specifically from mon-
archy itself. Originally, the Roman Empire favored senatorial
nobility and made it hereditary. But after Diocletian, senatorial
nobility was overshadowed by office nobility in which each office
holder attained a high post only through personal promotion.
Whether in such cases the attraction or the repulsion of the

Subordination of the Group to a Member 219

similar element remains predominant, is a question evidently
decided, not by utilitarian factors alone, but also by the deeper
psychological readiness to value the like or else the unlike.

From the very general type of this sociological problem de-
rives the specific problem here discussed. Innumerable times
it is merely a sentiment, that cannot be rationalized, which de-
cides whether one feels more humiliated by subordination to a
closely related or to a more distant party. All medieval social
instincts and life feelings are revealed by the fact that, when in
the thirteenth century the guilds were endowed with public
power, they demanded, at the same time, that all workers of the
same craft be subordinated to them. The idea was that it would
be unthinkable for a craft tribunal to judge somebody who was
not himself a member of the judging court. The very opposite
feeling, which can just as little be reduced to any particular
utilities, moved some Australian hordes not to choose their
chiefs by themselves, but to have them chosen for them by the
leaders of adjacent tribes. In a similar fashion, some nature peo-
ples do not manufacture their own currency but import it from
the outside, so that occasionally we find a sort of industry which
produces monetary symbols (shells, etc.) for export to other
places where they are used as money.

In general, and reserving many modifications, we can say
that the lower a group is as a whole and the more, therefore,
every member of it is accustomed to subordination, the less will
the group allow one of its members to rule it. And, inversely, the
higher a group is as a whole, the more likely is it that it sub-
ordinates itself only to one of its peers. In the first case, domina-
tion by the member, the like person, is difficult because every-
body is low; in the second case, it is easier because everybody
stands high. The English House of Lords exhibits the most
extreme intensification of this feeling. Not only did every Peer
recognize it as his only judge, but once, in 1.330, the House ex-
pressly rebutted the insinuation that it might adjudge people
other than the Peers. Here the tendency to have oneself judged
only by one’s like is so decisive that it has a sort of inverse effect.
In a logically false, but psychologically both profound and un-
derstandable fashion, the Peers argued that since the like of

220 Subordination under an Individual

them were judged only by themselves, it followed that everybody
they judged became, so to speak, the like of them.

In the last example, a decisive relationship of subordination,
namely, the relation of the judged to his judge, is, in a certain
sense, conceived as a coordinate relationship. But sometimes
we find the reverse: that coordination is conceived as subordina-
tion. Here, again, is the dualism of reasons which can be indi-
cated, and of dark instincts — and the two may be separated or
fused. The rights of the medieval burgher were below those of
the nobility, but above those of the peasant. Occasionally, the
burgher rejected the idea of general legal equality because he
feared that equalization would deprive him of more (in favor
of the peasant) than it would give him (in his relation to the
nobility). More than once we meet with this sociological type:
an intermediate stratum can obtain its elevation to the level of
a higher stratum only at the expense of permitting a lower
stratum to become coordinate with itself; but it feels that this
coordination is so degrading that it gives up that elevation for
which it would have to pay such a stiff price. Thus, although
the Creoles of Spanish America were violently jealous of Euro-
pean-born Spaniards, their contempt for Mulattoes, Mestizoes,
Negroes, and Indians was even greater. In order to become the
equals of the Spaniards they would have had to allow these other
groups to become coordinate with themselves; but their racial
feeling would have made this coordination such a degradation
that, instead, they gave up their equality with the Spaniards.
This formal combination is expressed even more abstractly or
instinctively in a statement by H. S. Maine. The nationality
principle, as it is often proclaimed, he said, seems to imply that
people of one race are done wrong in case they have to have
common political institutions with people of another race. That
is, where there are two different social characters, A and B, A
seems to be subordinate to B as soon as he has to live under the
same constitution, even when this constitution, in its content,
involves no lowering or subordination whatsoever.

Subordination under the more distant personality has, finally,
the very important significance that it is the more suitable to the
extent to which the subordinates are heterogeneous or mutually
alien or opposed elements. The members of a collectivity who

Coordination of Parties in Case of Arbitration 221

are subject to a higher personality resemble specific notions that
are included in a general concept. This concept must be the
more elevated and abstract — that is, it must be the more distant
from the single ideas — the more different from one another
the ideas to be covered by it. The most typical sociological case,
whose identical form is represented in the most diverse fields,
is that of conflicting parties which choose an arbitrator. This
case has been discussed before. The more remote the arbiter is
from the party interests of either of the two, the more willingly
will the two parties submit to his decision. The analogy between
the arbitrator and the higher concept consists in the fact that,
what is common to both parties (the basis, that is, of their con-
flict as well as of their possible reconciliation), must somehow be
inherent in the arbitrator, or must at least be accessible to him.
There is a threshold of differences beyond which the meeting
of conflicting parties becomes impossible, no matter how high
the point of conciliation may be located. In regard to the history
of English industrial courts of arbitration to date, it has been
stressed that these courts perform excellent services in inter-
preting labor contracts and laws. These contracts and laws, how-
ever, are said to be only rarely the reason for large strikes and
lockouts, which .are the consequences, rather, of attempts, by
workers or employers, to change working conditions. Here,
where new bases of the relation between the two parties are at
issue, the court of arbitration is- not indicated: the cleavage
between the interests has become so wide that arbitration would
have to be infinitely high above them in order to include and
balance them. Analogously, we can think of ideas of such hetero-
geneous contents that it is impossible to find a general concept
which would cover their common features.

§ 12 . Coordination of Parties in Case of Arbitration

In the case of conflicting parties which are to subject them-
selves to the higher tribunal of the arbitrator, it is, furthermore,
a fact of decisive significance that these parties must be coordi-
nate. If there exists some super-subordination relationship be-
tween them, this will easily affect the judge's attitude toward
one of the two, and this attitude will disturb his impartiality.

222 Subordination under an Individual

The danger exists even where the arbitrator is equally remote
from the objective interests of either party; for, in spite of this,
he will be inclined to be prejudiced in favor of the superordinate
party or, occasionally, of the subordinate one. Class sympathies
are a case in point. They are often quite unconscious because
they are inseparably interwoven with the totality of the indi-
vidual’s thoughts and feelings. They constitute the a priori, so
to speak, which forms the apparently purely objective appraisal
of the case. Class sympathies reveal their intimate integration
with the very nature of the individual by the fact that his effort
to avoid them usually does not lead to real objectivity and bal-
ance, but to falling into the opposite extreme.

Furthermore, where parties are in very different positions of
elevation and power, the mere belief in the prejudicial character
of the arbitrator (even if in actuality he is not prejudiced) is
sufficient to make the whole procedure illusory. In conflicts
between the workers and entrepreneurs, English courts of arbi-
tration often call in an outside manufacturer as arbitrator. Yet
every time his decision is against the workers, the workers accuse
him of favoring his own class, no matter how impeccable his
character may be. Inversely, if the arbitrator should be a parlia-
mentarian, the manufacturers suspect him of weakness for the
most numerous class of his constituents. Thus, a fully satisfactory
situation will be the outcome only if the parties are in perfect
coordination — be it only because, otherwise, the superordinate
party usually also harvests the usurer’s interest of its position,
namely, that, for the decision between itself and the subordinate
party, it will manage to obtain an arbitrator who is in its own
favor. For this reason, it is also legitimate to make the inverse
inference: the nomination of an impartial arbitrator is always
a sign that the conflicting parties recognize a certain reciprocal
coordination. In voluntary English arbitratioin, worker and
entrepreneur must subject themselves, by contract, to the deci-
sion of the arbitrator, who can be neither an entrepreneur nor
a worker. Evidently, only the entrepreneurs’ recognition of the
workers’ coordination could make them renounce the participa-
tion of entrepreneurs in the settlement of a conflict, and make
them entrust it to an outsider.

There is, finally, another, materially very different example

Coordination of Parties in Case of Arbitration 223

which teaches us that the common relationship o£ several ele-
ments to a superordinate party presupposes, or effects, a coordi-
nation among these elements, irrespective of all other differ-
ences, indifferences, and contrasts; and that this coordination
is the more necessary, the higher the tribunal is. It is obviously
very important for the socializing significance which religion
may have for large groups that God should be at a certain distance
from the believers. The immediate, almost local nearness to
the faithful, which is characteristic of the divine principles of
all totemistic and fetishistic religions, as well as of the ancient
Hebrew God, makes these religions entirely unsuitable to gov-
ern very large groups. Only the immense elevation of the idea
of the Christian God permitted the equality-before-God of un-
equals. The distance to him was so immeasurable that differ-
ences among men were extinguished by it. This did not prevent
the intimate relation of the individual from being very close
to him, for in this respect, all differences among men were as-
sumed to disappear. Yet this intimate, individual relation tvas
crystallized in this purity and autonomy only under the impact
of that highest principle and of the relationship to it. Perhaps,
however, the Catholic Church could create a world religion
only by interrupting even this immediacy: by interposing itself
between man and God, it moved God to a height which even in
this regard was inaccessible to the unaided individual.

Chapter 3

Subordination under
a Plurality

§ 1 . Consequences for the Subordinates of.
Subordination under a Plurality

CERTAIN SOCIETAL STRUC-

tures are characterized by the superordination of a plurality or
social collectivity over individuals or other collectivities. In
analyzing these structures, the first thing to be noted is that
their significance for the subordinate is very uneven. The high-
est aim of the Spartan and Thessalian slaves was to become slaves
of the state rather than of individuals. Prior to the emancipation
of the feudal peasants in Prussia, the peasants on the state
domains had a far better lot than private peasants had. In the
large modern enterprises and warehouses, which are not charac-
terized by very individual management but either are joint-
stock companies or are administered as impersonally as if they
were, employees are better situated than in small businesses,
with their personal exploitation by the owner. This relationship
is repeated where the question is not the differential impact of
individuals as over collectivities, but of smaller versus larger
collectivities. India’s fate is considerably more favorable under
British rule than under that of the East-India Company. In these
cases, it is irrelevant, of course, whether the larger collectivity
itself (for instance, England) is governed by a monarch — pro-
vided that the technique of the domination which it exercises
has, in the largest sense, the character of super-individuality.
Thus, the aristocratic regime of the Roman Republic oppressed
the provinces by far more than did the Roman Empire, which
was much more just and objective. Usually it is also more favor-

224

Consequences for Subordinates under a Plurality 225

able for those who find themselves in a serving position to belong
to a larger group. The great seigniories which developed in the
seventh century in the Frankish realm often created a new, ad-
vantageous position for the subject population. The vast hold-
ings permitted an organization and differentiation of the workers.
They thus developed qualified, and therefore more highly es-
teemed, types of work which permitted the serf to rise socially
within an individual seigniory. In the same sense, state criminal
laws are often milder than those of smaller groups.

Yet, as has already been indicated, several phenomena run
in exactly the opposite direction. The allies of Athens and
Rome, as well as the territories which were once subject to
particular Swiss cantons, were suppressed and exploited as
cruelly as it would have hardly been possible under the tyranny
of a single ruler. The same joint-stock company, which in con-
sequence of the technique of its operation exploits its employees
less than does the private entrepreneur, in many cases (for in-
stance, in indemnifications and charities) cannot proceed as
liberally as the private citizen, who owes nobody an account of
his expenditures. And in regard to particular impulses: the
cruelties committed for the pleasure of the Roman circus audi-
ences — whoso extreme intensification was often demanded by
these audiences — would have hardly been committed by many, if
the delinquent had faced them as an individual.

The basic reason for the difference in the results which the
rule by a plurality has for its subordinates, lies, first of all, in its
character of objectivity. This character excludes certain feelings,
leanings, and impulses, which become effective only in the indi-
vidual actions of the subjects, but not in their collective be-
havior. Within the given relationship and its particular con-
tents, the situation of the subordinate may be influenced,
favorably or unfavorably, by the objective or by the individually
subjective character of this relationship; and, accordingly, differ-
ences result from this. Where the subordinate, in line with his
situation, needs the tenderness, altruism, and favor of the super-
ordinate, he will fare badly under the objective domination by
a plurality. Inversely, under conditions where only legality, im-
partiality, and objectivity are favorable to his situation, the rule
which has these features will be more desirable for him. It is

226 Subordination under a Plurality

characteristic of this phenomenon that the state, although it can
legally condemn the criminal, cannot pardon him; and even in
republics, the right to pardon is usually reserved for exercise
by particular individuals. The principle is revealed most strik-
ingly if we consider the material interests of communities. They
are governed according to the profoundly objective axiom of
greatest advantages and least sacrifices possible. This harshness
and lack of consideration is by no means the same as the cruelty
which individuals may commit for its own sake; but rather it is
a wholly consistent objectivity. In a similar fashion, the bru-
tality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations and
acting, to this extent, on the same axiom of greatest advantage
and least sacrifice, often does not appear to him at all as a moral
delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical be-
havior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation.

To be sure, this objectivity of collective behavior often
merely implies something negative, namely, that certain norms
to which the single individual ordinarily subjects himself, are
suspended. Objectivity amounts to being a form that is designed
to cover this suspension and to soothe the conscience. Every
single individual who participates in a given decision can hide
himself behind the fact, precisely, that it was a decision by the
whole group. He can mask his own lust for gain and his brutality
by maintaining that he only pursued the advantage of the to-
tality. The idea that the possession of power — specifically, of
rapidly acquired or long-lasting power — leads to its abuse, is true,
for individuals, only with many and striking exceptions. By
contrast, whenever it cannot be applied to social bodies and
classes it is only because of especially fortunate circumstances.

It is very remarkable that the disappearance of the individual
behind the totality serves, or even intensifies, the questionable
character of this procedure, even in cases when also the subju-
gated party is a collectivity. The psychological re-creation of
suffering — the essential vehicle of compassion and tenderness —
fails easily if the sufferer is not a namable or visible individual
but only a totality, which has no subjective states of mind, so
to speak. It has been noted that English communal life has been
characterized, throughout its history, by extraordinary justice
toward persons and by equally great injustice toward groups.

Consequences for Subordinates under a Plurality 227

In view of the strong feeling for individual rights, it is only this
second psychological peculiarity which accounts for the manner
in which Dissenters, Jews, Irishmen, Hindus, and, in earlier
periods, Scotchmen, have been treated. The immersion of the
forms and norms of personality in the objectivity of collective
life determines not only the action, but also the suffering of the
groups. Objectivity, to be sure, operates in the form of law; but,
where law is not compulsory and, therefore, ought to be replaced
by personal conscientiousness, it frequently appears that the
latter is no trait of collective psychology. This is shown even
more decisively when, because of its collective character, the
object of the procedure does not even stimulate the development
of this personal trait. The misuses of power, as, for instance, in
American city administrations, would have hardly attained their
enormous dimensions if the rulers were not corporations, and
the ruled not collectivities. Characteristically, it is sometimes
believed that these misuses can be reduced by greatly increasing
the power of the mayor — so that there would be somebody who
could personally be held responsible.

As a seeming exception to the objectivity of plurality action,
which in reality, however, only anchors the rule more solidly,
there is the behavior of the mass. It was already illustrated by the
Roman circus audience. Two phenomena must be fundamentally
distinguished here. On the one hand, there is the effect resulting
from a plurality as a self-consistent and particular structure
which, as it were, embodies an abstraction. Such a plurality may
be an economic association, a state, a church — any grouping
which in reality or by analogy has to be designated as a legal
person. On the other hand, there is the plurality which is in fact
physically present as a mass. Both are characterized by the sus-
pension of individual-personal differences. But in the first case,
this suspension causes features to come to the fore which lie, as
it were, above the individual character; whereas, in the second
case, those are activated which lie below. For within a mass of
people in sensory contact, innumerable suggestions and nervous
influences play back and forth; they deprive the individual of
the calmness and autonomy of reflection and action. In a crowd,
therefore, the most ephemeral incitations often grow, like aval-
anches, into the most disproportionate impulses, and thus appear

228 Subordination under a Plurality

to eliminate the higher, differentiated and critical functions of
the individual. It is for this reason that, in the theatre and at
assemblies, we laugh about jokes which in a room would '‘leave
us cold’*; that spiritualistic manifestations succeed best in “cir-
cles”; that social games usually reach the highest degree of gaiety
at the lowest intellectual level. Hence the quick, objectively
quite ununderstandable changes in the mood of a mass; hence
the innumerable observations concerning the “stupidity” of
collectivities.'*'

As I have said, I ascribe the paralyzation of higher qualities
and the lack of resistance to being swept away, to the incalculable
number of influences and impressions which cross back and
forth in a crowd between everybody and everybody else, mutu-
ally strengthening, crossing, deflecting, and reproducing them-
selves. On the one hand, because of this tangle of minimal exci-
tations below the threshold of consciousness, there develops a
great nervous excitement at the expense of clear and consistent
intellectual activity; it arouses the darkest and most primitive
instincts of the individual, which ordinarily are under control.
On the other hand, there emerges a hypnotic paralysis which
makes the crowd follow to its extreme every leading, suggestive
impulse. In addition, there are the power intoxication and ir-
responsibility of the individual, whereby the moral inhibitions
of the low and brutal impulses are eliminated. This satisfactorily
explains the cruelty of crowds — ^whether they be composed of
Roman circus goers, medieval Jew baiters, or American Negro
lynchers — and the dire lot of those who become their victims.

But here, too, the typical, twofold result of this sociological
relationship of subordination clearly appears. For, the impul-
siveness and suggestibility of the crowd occasionally allows it to
follow suggestions of magnanimity and enthusiasm which the
individual could not attain without it any more than he could
commit those acts of cruelty. The ultimate reason for the con-
tradictions within this configuration can be formulated as fol-
lows: between the individual with his situations and needs, on
the one hand, and all the super-individual or sub-individual
phenomena and internal and external situations involved in

7 More on this in the chapter on self-preservation [of the group. Not contained
in this volume].

Subordination under Opposed Superordinates 229

collectivization, on the other, there is no fundamental and con-
stant, but only a variable and contingent, relation. If, therefore,
abstract social units proceed more objectively, coolly, and con-
sistently than the individual; if, inversely, crowds in concrete
physical proximity act more impulsively, senselessly, and ex-
tremely than each of its members alone; then, each of these two
cases may be more favorable or more unfavorable for the person
who is subject to such a plurality. There is, so to speak, nothing
contingent about this contingency. It is the logical expression of
the incommensurability between the specifically individual
situations and claims at issue and the structures and moods that
rule or serve the proximity and interaction of the many.

§ 2 . Subordination under a Heterogeneous Plurality

In the preceding analyses of subordination under a plurality,
the single elements forming the plurality were coordinated, or,
in all relevant regards, they behaved as if they were. New phe-
nomena result, however, as soon as the superordinate plurality
does not act as a unit of homogeneous elements. In this case, the
superordinates may be either opposed to one another, or they
may form a scale on which some of them are subordinate to
higher superordinates. I first consider the former case. Its vari-
ous types can be shown in terms of the variety of consequences
for the subordinate.

§ 3 . Subordination under Mutually Opposed
Superordinates

[a] TOTAL SUBORDINATION

If somebody is totally subject to several persons or groups,
that is, subject in such a way that he has no spontaneity to con-
tribute to the relationship but is entirely dependent on each
super ordinate, he will suffer severely from their opposition. For,
everyone of them will claim him, his forces and services, wholly,
while at the same time holding him responsible — as if he were
free to be responsible — for whatever he does or neglects at the
compulsory request of the other. This is the typical situation of

230 Subordination under a Plurality

the “servant of two masters/' It is shown by children who stand
between their conflicting parents; or by small states which are
equally dependent on two powerful neighbors and hence, in
case of their conflict, are often made responsible by each of the
two for what their relationship of dependence upon the other
forces them to do. If the conflict of such subordinate groups is
wholly internalized and the superordinate elements operate as
ideal moral forces which make their claim within the individual
himself, then the situation appears as a “conflict of duties."
While the more external conflict only appears in the person
without originating there, as it were, this internal conflict breaks
out of the individual because the moral conscience, internally,
strives in two different directions, strives to obey two mutually
exclusive powers. External conflict, therefore, in principle ex-
cludes the spontaneity of the subject; and would, as a rule, be
quickly terminated if this spontaneity came to operate. By con-
trast, the conflict of duties is based on the fullest freedom of the
subject, because only this freedom can embody the recognition
of the two claims as morally obligatory claims. Yet, evidently,
this contrast does not prevent the conflict between two powers,
both of which request our obedience, from attaining the two
forms simultaneously. As long as a conflict is purely external, it
is worst if the personality is weak; but, if it becomes internalized,
it is most destructive if the personality is strong.

The rudimentary forms of such conflicts pervade our lives
at large, as well as in details. We are so adapted to them, we so
instinctively come to terms with them through compromise and
through the compartmentalization of our activities, that in most
cases they do not even enter our consciousness as conflicts. But,
where they do, the insolubility of this situation usually comes
to the fore — merely on the basis of its sociological form, even if
its contingent contents permit attenuation and conciliation. For
as long as there is a conflict of elements, each of which makes
full claim on the same individual, no partition of its forces will
satisfy those claims. What is more, usually not even a relative
solution by means of such a partition will be possible, because
a definite stand must be taken, and every single action faces an
inflexible pro or contra. There is no differentiating compromise
for Antigone between the religiously clothed claim of the family

Subordination under Opposed Super ordinates 231

group, which entails the burial of Polyneikes, and the law of
the State, which forbids it. After her death, the contrasts, in their
inner significance, face one another in exactly as harsh and un-
reconciled a manner as they did at the beginning of the tragedy.
They demonstrate that no behavior or fate of the individual who
is subject to them, can suspend the conflict which they project
into him. And even where the collision does not occur between
those forces themselves, but only within the subject which obeys
both; where, therefore, it seems easier to settle the collision by
dividing the subject’s activities between them — even there, it is
only the lucky accident following from the content of the situa-
tion which makes this solution possible. Here the type is: Render
unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s — ^but
what, if one needs the coin claimed by Caesar for a deed in
honor of God? The mere mutual strangeness and non-organiza-
tion of the authoriites on both of which an individual depends
at the same time, is sufficient to make his situation basically
contradictory. And this is all the more the case, the more the
conflict is internalized in the subject itself, and grows out of
the ideal claims which live in the individual consciousness of
duties. In the two examples given above, the subjectively moral
accent lies essentially on one side of the contrast, while to the
other side, the individual is subject only by some external inevi-
tability. But where both claims have the same inner weight, it
helps us little to use our best convictions for deciding in favor
of one of them or for dividing our forces between them. For,
the wholly or partially unmet claim still acts with all its weight;
its unfilled quantum makes us fully responsible for it, even if
externally it was impossible to satisfy it, and even if under the
given circumstances our solution was morally the most correct
one. Every really moral claim has something absolute that is not
satisfied by any relative fulfillment — ^which nevertheless alone
can be granted to it by virtue of the existence of another moral
claim. Here, too, where we do not have to bow to any tribunal
except our personal conscience, we fare no better than in the
other case where neither of two external, contradictory bonds
permits us any reservation in favor of the other. Internally, we
cannot rest as long as a moral necessity remains unrealized, no
matter whether or not we have a clean conscience in view of the

232 Subordination under a Plurality

fact that the existence of another necessity, which equally and
in the same sense transcends its possibility of realization, forced
us not to give more to the first than we actually did.

[b] RELATIVE SUBORDINATION

Subordination under external, mutually opposed or alien,
powers certainly becomes entirely different if the subordinate
possesses any spontaneity whatever, if he can invest in the rela-
tionship with some power of his own. This, in all its variations, is
the situation of duobus litigantibus tertius gaudet,^ which was
discussed in the preceding chapter [part]. Here, only some of its
applications to the case of subordination of the tertius, and of
the possibility that the higher parties are not in conflict, but,
only strangers to one another, will be indicated.

In regard to the existing quantum of freedom on the part
of the subordinates, the situation usually introduces a process of
growth which sometimes reaches the point of dissolving the sub-
ordination itself. An essential difference between the medieval
bondsman and the medieval vassal consisted in the fact that the
former had, and could have, only one master, whereas the latter
could take land from several lords and make the feudal vow to
each of them. Through this possibility of entering several feudal
service relations, the vassal gained solidity and independence in
regard to the single feudal lord, and, thus, was compensated
very considerably for the basic subordination of his position. A
formally similar situation, in reference to the religious indi-
vidual, is created by polytheism. Although the subject knows
that he is ruled by a plurality of divine powers, he can — in a
manner which logically, perhaps, is not wholly clear, but which
psychologically is very real to him — turn from an inaccessible or
powerless god to another god which gives him greater chances.
Even in contemporary Catholicism, the believer often abandons
a particular saint who has not rewarded him for his special
adoration, in order to devote it to another saint — although, in
principle, he cannot deny that the power which also the first
has over him continues to hold. Inasmuch as the individual has
at least some choice between the powers to which he is subject,
he gains a certain independence in respect to each of them and,

« *‘If two parties quarrel, the third has the advantage." — Tr.

Subordination under Opposed Super ordinates 233

as far as his intimate feelings are concerned, even, perhaps, in
respect to their totality. But this independence is denied him
where the same amount of religious dependency is concentrated
inescapably, as it were, in the idea of a single God.

This also is the form, finally, in which modern man gains a
certain independence in the field of economics. The modern
individual, especially the resident of the large city, is infinitely
more dependent on the sum of all his suppliers taken together
than is man under conditions of a simpler economy. Neverthe-
less, since he has an almost unlimited possibility of changing or
choosing among these suppliers, he has a freedom in regard to
each one of them which cannot even be compared with the
freedom of man under simpler or small-town conditions.

The same formal delimitation of the relationship results if
the divergence among the superordinates develops successively,
rather than simultaneously. According to historical contents and
special conditions, the most varied transformations appear; but
the same formal phenomenon operates in all of them. Formally,
the Roman Senate greatly depended upon the high state officials.
But since these officials had only short terms of office, whereas
the Senate kept its members permanently, the power of the
Senate actually* became much greater than could be inferred
from its legal relation to the government executives. Ever since
the fourteenth century, the growth in power of the House of
Commons, in comparison with the English Crown, resulted
from basically the same motive. The dynastic parties were still
capable of determining the elections in favor of Royalism or
Reform, of York or of Lancaster. Yet under all these power
demonstrations of the rulers. Commons persevered and, pre-
cisely because of the oscillations and changes of wind in the
highest regions, attained a firmness, strength, and independence
which it would perhaps never have gained if the highest regimes
had always had the same direction. In a corresponding manner,
the growth of the democratic consciousness in France has been
derived (among other things) from the fact that, since the fall
of Napoleon I, changing governmental powers followed one an-
other in rapid succession. Each one of them was incompetent,
uncertain, and trying to gain the favor of the masses — ^whereby
every citizen was bound to become deeply aware of his own

234 Subordination under a Plurality

social significance. Although he was subject to every one of these
governments, he nevertheless felt himself to be strong, because
he formed the lasting element in all the change and contrast
among the successive regimes.

There is a power which an element in a relationship acquires
by the mere fact of its perseverance in comparison with its vari-
able fellow elements. This power is such a general, formal
consequence that its exploitation by an element which is subordi-
nate in some relationship must be understood merely as a spe-
cial case. For, the superordinate has this power, too. There is
the prerogative which ‘‘the state*’ and “the church” have by
virtue of their mere stability as over against the short-livedness
of those that are ruled by them; and there is a whole range of
other examples — down to the highly singular one, that the high
frequency of puerperal fever during the Middle Ages greatly
increased the sovereignty of the husband in the house. For, the
result of this frequency was that most healthy men successively
had several wives. Thus, the power of the lord of the house
accumulated in one person, whereas that of the housewife was
distributed among several persons in succession.

§ 4 . Subordination under Stratified Superordinates

In all the cases discussed, the phenomena of superordination
and subordination seemed to permit the most contradictory
consequences for the subordinate. Yet everywhere, closer spe-
cification showed the reasons for these contradictions, without
making it necessary to abandon the same general type: no matter
what the contents, the common form remained the same. This
similarity also holds true in regard to the second combination,
which we must now discuss, namely, the case in which a num-
ber of superordinate authorities, instead of being mutually
alien or hostile, themselves stand in superordinate and subordi-
nate relationships toward one another.

[a] CONTACT BETWEEN TOP AND BOTTOM OF THE STRATIFICATION

SYSTEM

Here again, two very different constellations must be dis-
tinguished. The first is that the subordinate still stands in an

Subordination under Stratified Superordinates 235

immediate relation with the highest among his superordinates.
The second is that the intermediate layer, which is superordinate
to him but subordinate to the highest, completely separates him
from the latter and thus alone, actually, represents the super-
ordinate elements to him. Cases of the first kind were created by
feudalism, where the person who was inferior to the more power-
ful vassal, nevertheless remained the subject of the reigning
dynasty. English feudalism at the time of William the Conqueror
is a very faithful portrayal of this. It is described by Stubbs as
follows: ‘‘All men continued to be primarily the king’s men
and the public peace to be his peace. Their lords might demand
their service to fulfill their own obligations, but the king could
call them to his courts, and tax them without the intervention
of their lords, and to the king they could look for protection
against all foes.” Thus, the position of the subordinate in re-
gard to his superordinate is favorable if the latter, in his turn, is
subordinate to a still higher authority in which the former finds
support. This, in fact, is really a natural consequence of the
underlying sociological configuration. In general, there is always
some hostility or question of jurisdiction between contiguous
elements of a hierarchy. The middle element, therefore, is often
in conflict with both the higher and lower ones. Common hos-
tility unites the most divergent sectors, that cannot be unified
by any other means. This is one of the typical formal rules
which is proved in all existing fields of social life.

A nuance of it becomes particularly important for the prob-
lem under discussion here. Even in the ancient Orient, it is the
glory of the ruler to take up the cause of the weak who are
oppressed by the strong — be it only, because in this fashion, the
ruler emerges more powerful than the oppressor. In Greece it
happened that an oligarchy previously in power branded the
very same person with the name of tyrant whom the lower
masses revered as their liberator from tyranny — as it occurred
to Euphron of Sicyon. It is hardly necessary to re-emphasize the
frequency, throughout history, of the motive of the lower
masses which are supported by the ruler in their fight against
the aristocracy. What is more, even where there is no such im-
mediate relation between the highest and lowest steps of the
social scale for the purpose of checking the intermediate layers;

236 Subordination under a Plurality

where, on the contrary, the lowest and intermediate strata are
equally suppressed by the highest; even there, the mere fact that
the intermediate layer, too, experiences the fate of the lowest,
offers it at least a psychological, emotional relief. Among cer-
tain African and Asiatic peoples, polygamy takes on a form in
which only one of the wives is considered the proper, first, or
legitimate spouse, while the others are in a subordinate or serv-
ing position in regard to her. But, in respect to the husband, even
the superordinate wife is by no means better situated: for him,
she is as much a slave as the other wives are. Such a situation, in
which one of two superordinates is under the same pressure from
above as is his inferior in regard to him, no doubt makes — in
view of general human disposition — the pressure more bearable
for the latter, too. Man usually draws some satisfaction from the
suppression of his suppressor. He usually has some feeling of
superiority if he can identify himself with his master’s master,
even where this sociological constellation does not involve any
real relief from pressure.

[b] TRANSMISSION OF PRESSURE

The content or form of the sociological structure may ex-
clude contact between the highest and lowest layer which could
be used for a common hostility against the middle. Hence, the
continuity of the structure runs from top to bottom, but not
inversely. If these are the features of the structure, there is room
for the emergence of a typical sociological process which may
be designated as the transfer or transmission [Abwdlzun^ of
pressure. If this occurs, we no longer have the case of a powerful
person or party exploiting its position for the abuse of a weaker
one. Rather, the superordinate here transmits the impairment
of his position, against which he cannot defend himself, to some
powerless person, and thus tries to maintain himself in the status
quo ante. The retailer transfers the difficulties which arise for
him from the pretensions and caprices of the public, to the
wholesaler; the wholesaler, to the manufacturer; and the manu-
facturer to his workers.

In every hierarchy, a new pressure or imposition moves along
the line of least resistance which, though not in its first stage,
usually and eventually, runs in a descending direction. This is

Subordination under Stratified Superordinates 237

the tragedy of whoever is lowest in any social order. He not only
has to suffer from the deprivations, efforts, and discriminations
which, taken together, characterize his position: in addition,
every new pressure on any point whatever in the superordinate
layers is, if technically possible at all, transmitted downward
and stops only at him. Irish agrarian conditions give a very pure
example of this. The English lord who owned an estate in Ire-
land but never visited his property, leased it to a head farmer
who in turn rented it out to smaller farmers, etc., so that the
poor peasant often had to lease his small piece of land from a fifth
or sixth middleman. This accounted for the fact, first, that he
had to pay six pounds for a field, of which sum the owner
received only ten shillings. But furthermore, every rise of the
farm-rent by a shilling, which the owner imposed upon the
farmer with whom he negotiated directly, reached the peasant
not as a rise by a shilling, but by the twelvefold amount. For,
evidently, the initial increase in pressure is not transferred in
its absolute magnitude, but in its relative magnitude, which
corresponds to the already existing measure of power of the
superior over the inferior. Thus, the reprimand which an em-
ployee receives from his superior may be in the moderate
phraseology of Jiigher civilization; but this employee, perhaps,
will already express his annoyance at the reprimand by crudely
shouting at his subaltern, who angrily beats up his children on
a perfectly trifling occasion.

[c] SEPARATION BETWEEN TOP AND BOTTOM OF THE
STRATIFICATION SYSTEM

The particularly unfavorable situation of the lowest element
in a complex scale of super-subordination derives from the fact
that the scale permits a certain continuous downward-gliding
of the pressure. Another structure, which formally strikes us as
quite different, leads to very similar results for the lowest stra-
tum. It, too, destroys its connection with the highest element,
which was its support against the intermediary layers. This in-
termediate layer may be such a broad and powerful stratum
between the other two that all measures taken by the top in
favor of the bottom must pass through it. Instead of a connection
between above and below, this situation often effects their com-

238 Subordination under a Plurality

plete separation. As long as individuals were subject to particu-
lar manors, the nobility carried the administrative organization
of the state and, in regard to its subjects, exercised judicial, eco-
nomic, and tax functions, without which the state could not have
existed. Thus, nobility did in fact link the subject masses to
the general interest and to the supreme power. But, since the
nobility also had private interests, in behalf of which it wanted
to exploit the peasants for itself, it utilized its position as an
administrative organ intermediate between the government and
the bottom, and thus for a long time actually annulled the meas-
ures and laws designed by the government in behalf of the
peasants. This was possible because, for a very long time, the
government could act only through the medium of the nobility.
It is obvious that the formation of such insulating layers harms
not only the lowest, but also the highest link of the scale, by
depriving it of forces which would accrue to it from below.
Medieval German kingship, for instance, was extraordinarily
weakened by the fact that the rising lower nobility was bound
only to the higher nobility, because it was enfeoffed by it alone.
The intermediate link of the high nobility eventually separated
the lower nobility from the crown entirely.

For the rest, obviously, the effect of this structure and its
separations and fusions upon the lowest element, depends on
the attitude of the higher strata toward this element. Contrary
to the cases observed thus far, modifications in this attitude may
cause the separation through the intermediate layer to be favor-
able, and the circumvention of the intermediate layer, to be un-
favorable. The first case has applied to England since Edward I,
when the exercise of judiciary, financial, and police authority
was gradually transferred, by legal order, to the propertied classes
organized in county and city associations. These, as whole groups,
took over the individual’s protection against absolute force. The
communal units, represented in Parliament, became the coun-
terweight of the highest power which shielded the individual
from illegal and unjust transgressions by the state government.
In the France of the Ancien Regime the process was the reverse.
Here, from the beginning, nobility was tied up intimately with
the local group which it administered and ruled, and whose
interests it represented in the central government. The state

The Phenomenon of Outvoting 239

injected itself into this relation between nobleman and peasant,
and gradually took away from the nobility the functions of gov-
ernment — ^administration of justice, care of the poor, police, and
road construction. The nobility wanted no traffic with this cen-
tralized government, which was only interested in the collection
of money, and, therefore, withdrew from its social duties, aban-
doning the peasant to the royal intendants and delegates who
thought only of the cash box of the state, or of their own, and
completely deprived the farmer of his original support by the
nobility.

§5. The Phenomenon of Outvoting

A special form of subordination under a plurality lies in the
principle of “outvoting” [Vberstimmung\ of minorities by
majorities. Yet, beyond its significance for the sociology of super-
ordination and subordination, outvoting roots itself in so many
other interests of societal formation and branches out in so many
of them, that it appears appropriate to discuss it in a special
section.®

The essence of societal formation, which accounts for the
incomparability, of its results as much as for the unsolved state
of its inner problems, is this: that out of closed units — such as
human personalities more or less are — a new unit emerges. A
painting cannot be made out of paintings, nor a tree out of
trees: the autonomous whole does not grow out of wholes, but of
dependent parts. Only society makes that which is whole and
centered in itself into a mere member of a more comprehensive
whole. Ultimately, all restless evolution of societal forms, in its
bold outlines as in its minute details, is merely the ever renewed
attempt at reconciling the individual’s unity and totality (which
are oriented inwardly) with his social role (which is only a part of
society and a contribution to it). It is an attempt at saving the
unity and totality of society from disruption by the autonomy of
its parts. Every conflict among the members of a collectivity
makes the continuance of this collectivity dubious. The signifi-

® ". . . sic in einem besonderen Exkurs [excursion, note] zu hehandeln.” Follows
a five-page **Exkurs ilber die Vberstimmun^' in smaller type. This is translated
as the present section. — Tr.

240 Subordination under a Plurality

cance, therefore, of voting — of voting to the result of which the
minority, too, agrees to yield — is the idea that the unity of
the whole must, under all circumstances, remain master over the
antagonism of convictions and interests. In its seeming sim-
plicity, voting is one of the most outstanding means by which the
conflict among individuals is eventually transformed into a uni-
form result.

But this has by no means always been so matter-of-course as
it strikes us today. The form under discussion also includes the
dissenter. Every person who participates in the voting practically
accepts its result — unless he secedes from the group in anticipa-
tion of this result. There are two main factors which, in all kinds
of groups, do not admit of the majority principle, but require
unanimity for every decision. On the one hand, there is a cer-
tain intellectual clumsiness which makes it impossible to under-
stand the creation of a social unit out of dissenting elements. On
the other hand, there is a strong feeling of individuality on
account of which one does not wish to yield to any decision with-
out full consent. Thus, the decisions of the German mark asso-
ciations had to be unanimous; what could not be done
unanimously was not done at all. Until far into the Middle
Ages, the English nobleman who dissented from the granting
of a tax or was absent at the relevant deliberations, often refused
to pay for it. The above-mentioned feeling of individuality
operates where unanimity is required for the election of a king
or leader: he who has not personally elected him is not expected
or required to obey him. In the tribal council of the Iroquois,
as well as in the Polish Diet, no decision was valid from which
even a single voice had dissented.

Yet the contradiction between cooperating in a collective
action and opposing it as an individual, does not, in itself alone,
entail the logical consequence of unanimity. For if a proposal,
for lack of a unanimous vote, is considered rejected, the minority
(to be sure) is thereby prevented from being violated by the
majority — but the majority is also violated by the minority.
Moreover, the suspension of a measure which has been approved
by a majority usually is something very tangible, something
which has very positive consequences; and it is these conse-
quences which the minority, with the help of the principle of

The Phenomenon of Outvoting 241

compulsory unanimity, foists upon the majority. This “minor-
ization” of the majority by means of unanimity negates, in
principle, the individual freedom which it is designed to save.
But aside from this ‘‘minorization,” historically and practically,
the principle of unanimity has often enough had the same result.
For the Spanish kings, there was no more favorable situation for
suppressing the Aragonese Cortes than this very “freedom”:
until 1 592, the Cortes could make no decision once even a single
member of the four estates disagreed. This so paralyzed action
that a less cumbersome substitute was required forthwith. Some-
times — as in verdicts by juries — it is impossible to waive a pro-
posal or to renounce a practical result, because it must be reached
under all circumstances. In such cases, the requirement of unani-
mity (found, for instance, in England and America) is based on
the more or less unconscious assumption that the objective
truth must always also be subjectively convincing, and that,
inversely, the identity of subjective convictions is the criterion
of objective truth. It is further assumed, therefore, that a mere
majority decision probably does not yet contain the full truth
because, if it did, it ought to have succeeded in uniting all votes.
Here we have an apparently clear, but at bottom mystical, faith
in the power of truth, in the ultimate coincidence of the logi-
cally correct with the psychologically real. This faith brings
about the solution of the basic conflict between individual con-
victions and the claim on them to produce a uniform, over-all
result. In its practical consequences, this faith leads to the oppo-
site of its own tendency, as much as does the individualistic
justification of unanimity: where the jury is locked up until it
reaches a unanimous verdict, a potential minority is almost ir-
resistibly tempted to join the majority against its own conviction,
which it cannot hope to carry through — in order to avoid the
senseless and possibly unbearable prolongation of the session.

On the other hand, in majority decisions, the subordination
of the minority may be bas^d on two motives, whose distinction
is of the greatest sociological significance. The overpowering of
the minority can, first, derive from the fact that the many are
more powerful than the few. Although, or rather because, the
voting individuals are considered to be equals, the majority has

10 The original, by mistake, reads ‘*Majorisierung.** — Tr.

242 Subordination under a Plurality

the physical power to coerce the minority, whether the majority
is ascertained by preliminary vote or by representation. The
voting serves the purpose of avoiding the immediate contest
of forces and of finding out its potential result by counting votes,
so that the minority may convince itself that its actual resistance
would be of no avail. In the group, therefore, two parties con-
front one another like two independent groups, between which
the decision is made by power relations, represented by votes.
Voting has the same methodological function here as have, be-
tween parties, diplomatic or other negotiations designed to avoid
the ultima ratio of fight. Aside from exceptions, here too, the
individual after all gives in only if the adversary can make it
clear to him that, in case of a serious contest, he would have to
pay an (at least) equally severe penalty. Like those inter-group
negotiations, voting, too, is a projection of real forces and of
their proportions upon the plane of intellectuality; it anticipates,
in an abstract symbol, the result of concrete battle and coercion.
This symbol, at least, does represent the real power relations
and the enforced subordination which they impose on the mi-
nority.

Sometimes, this enforced physical subordination is subli-
mated into an ethical form. In the later Middle Ages, we often
find the principle that the minority ought to follow the majority.
This principle, evidently does not only involve the suggestion
that the minority should cooperate with the majority for prac-
tical reasons: it should also accept the will of the majority; it
should recognize that the majority wants what is right. Unani-
mity is not a fact but a moral claim. The action taken against
the will of the minority is legitimated by a unity of the will,
which is produced retroactively. The old-German, real require-
ment of unanimity thus became a pale ideal requirement. But
a wholly new factor is contained in it, namely, the majority’s
inner right, which goes beyond the numerical preponderance of
votes and the external superiority symbolized by it. The major-
ity appears as the natural representative of the totality. It shares
in the significance of its unity, which transcends the mere sum
of the component individuals, and has something of a super-
empirical or mystical note. If Grotius later maintained that the
majority had naturaliter jus integri [by nature the right of the

The Phenomenon of Outvoting 243

whole], he thus fixed this inner claim over the minority; for
one not only must recognize a law, one also ought to do so.

The fact that the majority possesses the right of the whole
according to ‘'the nature*' of things, that is, on grounds of inner,
rational necessity, shows the transition from the nuance of the
right to outvote which has just been noted, to its second im-
portant central motive. The voice of the majority now no longer
is the voice of the greater power within the group, but is the
sign that the homogeneous will of the group has decided in favor
of this side. The requirement of unanimity initially derived
entirely from an individualistic basis. The original sociological
feeling of the Germanic peoples was that the unity of the com-
mon cause did not live outside the individuals but entirely
within them. For this reason, the will of the group not only
was not ascertained, but did not exist at all, as long as even a
single member dissented. But even where outvoting is resorted
to, it still has an individualistic basis as long as it operates on
the idea that the many are more powerful than the few, and that
the function of voting is merely to reach the result of the real
contest of forces without engaging in this contest itself. In com-
parison with this conception, the principle of an objective group
unit, with its own, homogeneous will, is a wholly new develop-
ment, whether the assumption of this principle is a conscious
act, or practice merely proceeds as if such an autonomous group
will did exist. The will of the state, of the community, of the
church, of the group based on a common interest, exists irrespec-
tive of any contrasts among individual wills contained in these
groups, and it also exists outside the temporal succession of
their members. Since the group will is one, it must act in a cer-
tain, homogeneous fashion. But this is in conflict with the fact
that its bearers have antagonistic volitions. The contradiction,
therefore, calls for a solution. It is found in the assumption
that the majority knows or represents this will better than the
minority.

Here, therefore, the subordination of the minority has a very
different significance than before. For now, the minority is, in
principle, not excluded but included; and the majority acts, not
in the name of its own greater power, but in the name of the
ideal unity and totality. It is only to the latter, speaking through

244 Subordination under a Plurality

the voice of the majority, that the minority subordinates itself:
it has already belonged to it from the beginning. This is the
inner principle of parliamentary elections. The representative
feels himself to be the delegate of the whole people, rather than
of particular interests, which ultimately are based on the indi-
vidualistic principle of the contest of forces, or of local interests,
which derive from the erroneous idea that their sum equals the
interest of the whole.

The transition to this fundamental sociological principle
can be observed in the development of the English Lower
House. From the beginning, its members were considered the
representatives neither of a particular number of citizens nor
of the whole people, but of certain local political groups, com-
munities and counties, which had the right to participate in
forming the parliament. This local principle was so rigidly ob-
served that, for a long time, every member of Commons had
to reside in his electoral place. But, nevertheless, it was of a
somehow ideal nature, since it rose above the notion of the mere
sum of individual voters. It only took an increase and awareness
of the interests which were common to all these groups; and
the higher union to which all of them belonged, namely, the
state unit, emerged as the proper subject of their mandate.
Through the recognition of their essential solidarity, the indi-
vidual localities represented grew together into the whole of
the state in such a way that the localities came to have the only
function of designating a delegate for the representation of this
whole. Once such a homogeneous group will was assumed, the
elements of the minority dissented, so to speak, only as indi-
viduals, not as group members.

This alone can be the deeper meaning of the Lockean theory
of the original contract which is designed to establish the state.
Since this contract is the absolute foundation of the group, it
must be concluded with full unanimity. Yet the contract itself
contains the clause that everybody considers the will of the
majority as his own will. In entering into the social contract,
the individual is still absolutely free, and therefore cannot be
subjected to outvoting. But once he has entered it, he is no
longer a free individual but a social being and, as such, only
part of a unit whose will finds its decisive expression in the will

The Phenomenon of Outvoting 245

of the majority. This idea is formulated in an explicit fashion
by Rousseau, when he holds outvoting not to be any violation
of the individual, for the reason that it can be provoked only
by the dissenter's error: the dissenter took something, which
actually was not the general will, to be the volonte generale.
This idea of Rousseau is based on the conviction that, in the
capacity of group member, one can want nothing else than the
will of the group: and in regard to the will of the group, only
the single individual, but not the majority, can be mistaken.
For this reason, Rousseau made a very fine distinction between
the formal fact of voting and the particular contents of voting;
and he declared that one participated in the formation of the
common will by the fact of voting itself. Rousseau's idea could
be explicated by stating that, through the act of voting, the
individual commits himself not to avoid the unity of this will,
not to destroy it by pitting his own will against the majority.
Subordination to the majority, thus, is only the logical conse-
quence of belonging to the social unit to which the individual
committed himself by his vote.

Practice is not entirely removed from this abstract theory.
The best student of the federation of English trade unions says
that their majority decisions are justifiable and practicable only
insofar as the interests of the various confederates are homoge-
neous. As soon as differences of opinion between majority and
minority result from real differences in interests, any compul-
sion produced by outvoting inevitably leads to a separation of
the members. In other words, a vote makes sense only if the
existing interests can fuse into a unity. If divergent tendencies
preclude this centralization, it becomes a contradictory proce-
dure to entrust a majority with the decision, since the homoge-
neous will, which ordinarily (to be sure) can be better ascer-
tained by a majority than by a minority, is objectively non-
existent.

Here, we have this seeming contradiction, which in reality,
however, profoundly illuminates the relationship: that, pre-
cisely where a super-individual unity exists or is assumed, out-
voting is possible; but that, where this unity is lacking, it is
necessary to have unanimity, which in practice, from case to
case, replaces it by actual equality. It is entirely in this sense

246 Subordination under a Plurality

that the municipal law of Leiden determined, in 1266, that the
permission of the eight city jurors was necessary for the admis-
sion of outsiders into the city, but that for court decisions, not
their unanimity, but only a simple majority, was required. The
law by which the judges decided was determined once for all,
and the point was merely to recognize the relationship of the
individual case, which the majority could presumably do more
correctly than the minority. But the admission of a new citizen
touched on all the varied and divergent interests within the
citizenry so that this admission could not be granted on the basis
of the abstract unit constituted by these interests, but only on
the basis of the sum of all individual interests, that is, through
unanimity.

The deeper justification of outvoting, then, is that it merely
reveals, as it were, the will of a significant unit, a will which
already existed ideally. This justification, however, does not
remove the difficulty which inheres in the majority as a purely
overwhelming power surplus. For often the conflict over the
content of the will of that abstract unit will be no more easily
solved than the conflict among the immediate, real interests.
The violation of the minority is no less grave for occurring in
this indirect way and under this different name. The idea of the
majority needs, at least, an additional, entirely new dignity. For,
it may be plausible, but it is by no means self-evident, that the
more correct knowledge is, in fact, on the side of the majority.
It is particularly dubious where knowledge, and action upon
this knowledge, is based on the inner responsibility of the indi-
vidual — as in the more profound religions. The whole history
of Christianity has been characterized by the opposition of
the individual conscience to the resolutions and actions of
majorities. In the second century, when the Christian com-
munities of a given area introduced assemblies with the purpose
of deliberating on religious and external affairs, the resolutions
of these assemblies were explicitly not obligatory for the dissent-
ing minority. Yet the effort of the church toward the unity came
into insoluble conflict with this individualism. The Roman
state wished to recognize only one united church; the church
itself sought to solidify itself by imitating the unity of the state.
Thus, the originally autonomous Christian communities fused

The Phenomenon of Outvoting 247

into a unitary total structure whose councils decided, by ma-
jority vote, on the contents of the faith. This was an unheard-of
violation of the individual members — at least, of the com-
munities — ^whose unity, previously, had consisted only in the
equality of the ideals and hopes which each of them possessed
for himself. A subordination in matters of faith might have
been permissible for inner or personal reasons; but that the
majority, as such, requested subjection and declared every dis-
senter a non-Christian, could be justified only, as I have already
suggested, by accepting a wholly new significance of “majority*’:
one had to assume that God was always with the majority. As an
unconscious but fundamental feeling, or in some kind of formu-
lation, this motive pervades the whole later development of
voting forms. That an opinion, only because its exponents are
more numerous than those of another opinion, should encom-
pass the meaning of the super-individual unit, is an entirely
undemonstrable dogma. In fact, it is so little justified that with-
out an auxiliary, more or less mystical relation between that
unit and the majority, it remains suspended in mid-air; or else
it is based on the somewhat weak foundation that, after all, one
has to act somehow and, even if one may not assume the ma-
jority as such tQ know what is right, there is the less reason for
assuming it of the minority.

Thus, both the requirement of unanimity and the subordi-
nation of the minority are threatened by difficulties from various
sides. All these difficulties are merely the expression of the fun-
damentally problematic character of the whole task of extracting
the action of a homogeneous will from a totality which is com-
posed of differently oriented individuals. The task is a calcula-
tion which cannot be solved without remainder, any more than
one can make something out of black and white elements, on
the condition that the result be either black or white. Even in
the most favorable case of a group unity supposed to exist out-
side the individuals, where the counting of votes is merely a
means for ascertaining the tendencies of this group unity — even
in this case, there remains unsettled the question whether the
objectively necessary decision is identical with that which is
based on counting votes. What is more, provided even the ele-
ments of the minority really dissent only as individuals and not

248 Subordination under a Plurality

as elements of that group unity, nevertheless, they exist as in-
dividuals: after all, they belong to the group in the larger sense
of the term; they are not simply obliterated by the whole. In
some way or other, they enter the whole of the group even as dis-
senting individuals.

To be sure, the separation of man as a social being and as
an individual is a necessary and useful fiction. But reality and
its claims are by no means exhausted by it. The inadequacy and
the feeling of inner contradiction in voting methods are char-
acterized by the fact that, in various places, most recently prob-
ably in the Hungarian Parliament well into the * thirties of the
nineteenth century, the votes were not counted but weighed, so
that the presiding officer could announce even the opinion of
the minority as the result of the vote. It appears nonsensical
that a man subjects himself to an opinion which he holds to be
false, only because others hold it to be true — while, following
from the very premise of the election, every one of these others
has the same right and the same value as he does. But, on the
other hand, the requirement of unanimity which is to meet
this contradiction, shows itself to be no less contradictory and
unfair. And this is not an accidental dilemma, not a merely
logical difficulty. It is only one among the symptoms of the deep
and tragic ambiguity which pervades the very roots of every
societal formation, of every formation of a unit out of units. The
individual who lives from his inner resources, who can answer
for his actions only if they are directed by his own conviction,
is supposed to orient his will toward the purposes of others. As
something ethical, this remains always a matter of his own will;
it flows from the innermost core of his personality. But what is
more, he is also supposed to become, in his self-based existence,
a member of a collectivity which has its center outside of him.
We are not discussing here particular harmonies or collisions
of these two claims. The point, rather, is that man internally
stands under two, mutually alien norms; that our movement
revolving around our own center (something totally different
from egoism) claims to be as definitive as the movement around
the social center; in fact, it claims to be the decisive meaning of
life. Into the vote concerning the action of the group, the
individual does not enter as an individual, but in his super-

The Phenomenon of Outvoting 249

individual function of member. But still, the dissent of votes
transplants upon this purely social soil a ray, a secondary form,
of individuality and its unique character. And even this indi-
viduality, which merely desires to ascertain and represent the
will of the super-individual group unit, is negated by the fact
of outvoting. Even here, the minority must subordinate itself,
although to belong to the minority forms the inalienable oppor-
tunity of every individual. And it must subordinate itself, not
only in the simple sense in which ordinarily convictions and
efforts are negated and made ineffectual by opposing forces, but
in the more subtle and crafty sense that the loser, because he is
part of the group, must positively participate in the action which
was decided upon against his will and conviction. What is more,
the uniform character of the eventual decision which contains
no trace of his dissent, makes him, too, responsible for it. In this
way, outvoting, far from being only the simple practical viola-
tion of the one by the many, becomes the most poignant expres-
sion of the dualism between the autonomous life of the indi-
vidual and the life of society, a dualism which is often harmo-
nized in experience, but which, in principle, is irreconcilable.

Chapter 4

Subordination under
a Principle

§ 1. Subordination under a Principle vs. a Person

I NOW COME, FINALLY, TO

the third typical form of subordination, subordination neither
to an individual nor to a plurality, but to an impersonal, ob-
jective principle. The fact that here a real interaction, at least
an immediate interaction, is precluded, seems to deprive this
form of the element of freedom. The individual who is sub-
ordinate to an objective law feels himself determined by it;
while he, in turn, in no way determines the law, and has no
possibility of reacting to it in a manner which could influence
it — quite in contrast to even the most miserable slave, who, in
some fashion at least, can still in this sense react to his master.
For if one simply does not obey the law, one is, to this extent,
not really subjected to it; and if one changes the law, one is not
subordinate to the old law at all, but is again, in the same en-
tirely unfree manner, subject to the new law. In spite of this,
however, for modern, objective man, who is aware of the differ-
ence between the spheres of spontaneity and of obedience, sub-
ordination to a law which functions as the emanation of imper-
sonal, uninfluenceable powers, is the more dignified situation.
This was quite different at a time when the personality could
preserve its self-esteem only in situations characterized by full
spontaneity, which even in case of complete subordination were
still associated with inter-personal effect and counter-effect. For
this reason, as late as in the sixteenth century, princes in France,
Germany, Scotland, and the Netherlands often met with con-
siderable resistance, if they let their countries be ruled by ad-

250

Subordination under a Principle vs. a Person 251

ministrative bodies or erudite substitutes — that is, more nearly
by laws. The ruler's order was felt to be something personal;
the individual wanted to lend him obedience only from per-
sonal devotion; and personal devotion, in spite of its uncondi-
tional character, is always in the form of free reciprocity.

This passionate personalism of the subordination relation-
ship almost becomes its own caricature in the following circum-
stance, reported from Spain at the beginning of the modern
period. An impoverished nobleman who became a cook or
lackey, did not thereby definitively lose his nobility: it only
became latent and could be awakened again by a favorable turn
of fate. But once he became a craftsman, his nobility was de-
stroyed. This is entirely contrary to the modern conception,
which separates the person from his achievement and, therefore,
finds personal dignity to be preserved best if the content of
subordination is as objective as possible. Thus, an American
girl, who would work in a factory without the slightest feeling
of humiliation, would feel wholly degraded as a family cook.
Already in thirteenth-century Florence, the lower guilds com-
prised occupations in the immediate service of persons, such as
cobblers, hosts, and school teachers; whereas the higher guilds
were composed of occupations which, though still serving the
public, were yet more objective and less dependent on particular
individuals — for instance, clothiers and grocers. On the other
hand, in Spain, where knightly traditions, with their engage-
ment of the whole person in all activity, were still alive, every
relationship which (in any sense) took place between person and
person, was bound to be considered at least bearable; while
every subordination to more objective claims, every integration
into a system of impersonal duties (impersonal, because serving
many and anonymous persons), was bound to be regarded as
wholly disgraceful. An aversion to the objectivity of law can
still be felt in the legal theories of Althusius: the summits
magistratus legislates, but he does so, not because he represents
the state, but because he is appointed by the people. The notion
that the ruler could be designated as the representative of the
state by appointment through law, not by personal appointment
(actual or presumed) by the people — is still alien to Althusius.

In antiquity, on the contrary, subordination to law ap-

252 Subordination under a Principle

peared thoroughly adequate, precisely because of the idea that
law is free from any personal characteristics. Aristotle praised
law as 'Ho meson,'* that is, as that which is moderate, impartial,
free from passions. Plato, in the same sense, had already recog-
nized government by impersonal law as the best means for coun-
teracting selfishness. His, however, was only a psychological
motivation. It did not touch the core of the question, namely,
the fundamental transition of the relationship of obedience from
personalism to objectivism, a transition which cannot be derived
from the anticipation of utilitarian consequence. Yet, in Plato,
we also find this other theory: that, in the ideal state, the insight
of the ruler stands above the law; and as soon as the welfare of
the whole seems to require it of the ruler, he must be able to act
even against the laws laid down by him. There must be laws
which may not be broken under any circumstances, only if
there are no true statesmen. The law, therefore, appears here
as the lesser evil — but not, as in the Germanic feeling, men-
tioned before, because subordination under a person has an
element of freedom and dignity in comparison with which all
obedience to laws has something mechanical and passive.
Rather, it is the rigidity of the law which is felt to be its weak-
ness: in its rigidity, it confronts the changing and unforeseeable
claims of life in a clumsy and inadequate way; and this is an
evil from which only the entirely unprejudiced insight of a
personal ruler can escape; and only where there is no such in-
sight, does law become relatively advantageous. Here, therefore,
it is always the content of the law, its physical state, as it were,
which determines its value or disvalue as compared with sub-
ordination under persons. The fact that the relationship of
obedience is totally different in its inner principle and in terms
of the whole feeling of life, on the part of the obeyer, according
to whether it originates in a person or in a law — this fact does
not enter these considerations. The most general, or formal
relation between government by law and government by person
can (of course) be expressed in a preliminary, practical manner
by saying that where the law is not forceful or broad enough,
a person is necessary, and where the person is inadequate, the
law is required. But, far beyond this, whether rule by man is
considered as something provisional in lieu of rule by perfect

Subordination under Objects 25S

law, or, inversely, rule by law is considered a gap-filler or an
inferior substitute for government by a personality which is
absolutely qualified to rule — this choice depends upon deci-
sions of ultimate, indiscussable feelings concerning sociological
values.

§ 2 . Subordination under Objects

There is still another form in which an objective principle
may become the turning point in the relationship between
super ordinates and subordinates, namely, when neither a law
nor an ideal norm, but rather a concrete object governs the
domination, as, for instance, in the principle of patrimony.
Here — most radically under the system of Russian bondage —
bonded subjects are only appurtenances of the land — “the air
bonds the people.” The terrible hardship of bondage at least
excluded personal slavery which would have permitted the sale
of the slave. Instead, it tied subordination to the land in such
a way that the bondsman could be sold only along with the land.
In spite of all contentual and quantitative differences, neverthe-
less, sometimes this same form occurs in the case of the modern
factory worker, whose own interest, through certain arrange-
ments, binds him to a given factory. For instance, the acquisi-
tion of his house was made possible for him, or he participated
out of his own purse in certain welfare expenditures, and all
these benefits are lost once he leaves the factory, etc. He is thus
bound, merely by objects, in a way which in a very specific
manner makes him powerless in respect to the entrepreneur.
Finally, it was this same form of domination which, under the
most primitive patriarchal conditions, was governed not by a
merely spatial, but by a living object: children did not belong
to the father because he was their progenitor, but because the
mother belonged to him (as the fruits of the tree belong to the
tree’s owner); therefore, children begotten by other fathers were
no less his property.

This type of domination usually involves a humiliatingly
harsh and unconditional kind of subordination. For, inasmuch
as a man is subordinate by virtue of belonging to a thing, he
himself psychologically sinks to the category of mere thing. With

254 Subordination under a Principle

the necessary reservations, one could say that where law regu-
lates domination, the superordinate belongs in the sphere of
objectivity; while, where a thing regulates it, the subordinate
does. The condition of the subordinate, therefore, is usually
more favorable in the first case, and more unfavorable in the
second, than in many cases of purely personal subordination.

§ 3. Conscience

Immediate sociological interest in subordination under an
objective principle attaches to two chief cases of it. One case is
when this ideal, superordinate principle can be interpreted as
a psychological crystallization of an actual social power. The
other is when, among those who are commonly subject to it, it
produces particular and characteristic relationships. The first
case must be taken into consideration, above all, when dealing
with moral imperatives. In our moral consciousness, we feel
subordinate to a command which does not seem to derive from
any human, personal power. The voice of conscience we hear
only in ourselves, although in comparison with all subjective
egoism, we hear it with a force and decisiveness which appar-
ently can stem only from a tribunal outside the individual.
An attempt has been made, as is well-known, to solve this con-
tradiction by deriving the contents of morality from social
norms. What is useful to the species and the group, the argument
runs, and what the group, therefore, requests of its members for
the sake of its own maintenance, is gradually bred into the
individual as an instinct. He thus comes to contain it in him-
self, as his own, autonomous feeling, in addition to his personal
feelings properly speaking, and thus often in contrast to them.
This, it is alleged, explains the dual character of the moral
command: that on the one hand, it confronts us as an impersonal
order to which we simply have to submit, but that, on the other,
no external power, but only our most private and internal
impulses, imposes it upon us. At any rate, here is one of the
cases where the individual, within his own consciousness, repeats
the relationships which exist between him, as a total personality,
and the group. It is an old observation that the conceptions of
the single individual, with all their relations of association and

Conscience 255

dissociation, differentiation, and unification, behave in the same
way in which individuals behave in regard to one another. It is
merely a peculiar case of this correspondence that those intra-
psychological relations are repeated, not only between individ-
uals in general, but also between the individual and his group.
All that society asks of its members — adaptation and loyalty,
altruism and work, self-discipline and truthfulness — the indi-
vidual also asks of himself.

In all of this, several very important motives cut across one
another. Society confronts the individual with precepts. He
becomes habituated to their compulsory character until the
cruder and subtler means of compulsion are no longer necessary.
His nature may thereby be so formed or deformed that he acts
by these precepts as if on impulse, with a consistent and direct
will which is not conscious of any law. Thus, the pre-Islamic
Arabs were without any notion of an objectively legal compul-
sion; in all instances, purely personal decision was their highest
authority, although this decision was thoroughly imbued with
tribal consciousness and the requirements of tribal life, which
gave it its norms. Or else, the law, in the form of a command
which is carried by the authority of the society, does live in
the individual consciousness, but irrespective of the question
whether society actually backs it with its compulsory power or
even itself supports it solely with its explicit will. Here then,
the individual represents society to himself. The external con-
frontation, with its suppressions, liberations, changing accents,
has become an interplay between his social impulses and the
ego impulses in the stricter sense of the word; and both are
included by the ego in the larger sense.

But this is not yet the really objective lawfulness, indi-
cated above, in whose consciousness of which no trace of any
historical-social origin is left. At a certain higher stage of
morality, the motivation of action lies no longer in a real-human,
even though super-individual power; at this stage, the spring
of moral necessities flows beyond the contrast between individ-
ual and totality. For, as little as these necessities derive from
society, as little do they derive from the singular reality of
individual life. In the free conscience of the actor, in individual
reason, they only have their bearer, the locus of their efficacy.

256 Subordination under a Principle

Their power of obligation stems from these necessities them-
selves, from their inner, super-personal validity, from an ob-
jective ideality which we must recognize, whether or not we
want to, in a manner similar to that in which the validity of a
truth is entirely independent of whether or not the truth be-
comes real in any consciousness. The content, however, which
fills these forms is (not necessarily but often) the societal require-
ment. But this requirement no longer operates by means of its
social impetus, as it were, but rather as if it had undergone a
metapsychosis into a norm which must be satisfied for its own
sake, not for my sake nor for yours.

We are dealing here with differences which not only are
psychologically of the greatest delicacy, but whose boundaries
are also constantly blurred in practice. Yet this mixture of moti-
vations in which psychic reality moves, makes it all the more
urgent that it be isolated analytically. Whether society and
individual confront one another like two powers and the indi-
vidual’s subordination is effected by society through energy
which seem to flow from an uninterrupted source and con-
stantly seems to renew itself; or whether this energy changes into
a psychological impulse in the very individual who considers
himself a social being and, therefore, lights and suppresses those
of his impulses that lean toward his '‘egoistic” part; or whether
the Ought, which man finds above himself as an actuality as
objective as Being, is merely filled with the content of societal
life conditions — these are constellations which only begin to
exhaust the kinds of individual subordination to the group.
In them, the three powers which fill historical life — society,
individual, and objectivity — become norm-giving, in this order.
But they do so in such a way that each of them absorbs the
social content, the quantity of superordination of society over
the individual; in a specific manner, each of them forms and
presents the power, the will, and the necessities of society.

§ 4 . Society and ^^Objectivity^*

Among these three potencies, objectivity can be defined as
the unquestionably valid law which is enthroned in an ideal
realm above society and the individual. But it can also be de-

Society and Objectivity*" 257

fined in still another dimension, as it were. Society often is the
third element, which solves conflicts between the individual
and objectivity or builds bridges where they are disconnected.
As regards the genesis of cognition, the concept of society has
liberated us from an alternative characteristic of earlier times,
namely, that a cultural value either must spring from an indi-
vidual or must be bestowed upon mankind by an objective
power — as has been shown by some examples in Chapter
Practically speaking, it is societal labor by means of which the
individual can satisfy his claims upon the objective order. The
cooperation of the many, the efforts of society as a unit, both
simultaneously and successively, wrest from nature not only a
greater quantity of need-satisfactions than can be achieved by
the individual, but also new qualities and types of need-satisfac-
tions which the labor of the individual alone cannot possibly
attain. This fact is merely a symbol of the deeper and funda-
mental phenomenon of society standing between individual
man and the sphere of general natural laws. As something
psychologically concrete, society blends with the individual; as
something general, it blends with nature. It is the general, but
it is not abstract. To be sure, every historical group is an indi-
vidual, as is ^very historical human being; but it is this only
in relation to other groups; for its members, it is super-
individual. But it is super-individual, not as a concept is in
regard to its single, concrete realizations, where the concept
synthesizes what is common to all of them. The group is super-
individual, rather, in a specific manner of generality — similar
to the organic body, which is “generaP' above its organs, or to
“room furniture,” which is “general” above table, chair, chest,
and mirror. And this specific generality coincides with the
specific objectivity which society possesses for its members as
subjects.

But the individual does not confront society as he confronts
nature. The objectivity of nature denotes the irrelevance of the
question of whether or not the subject spiritually participates
in nature; whether he has a correct, a false, or no conception
of it. Its being exists, and its laws are valid, independently of

11 This chapter is not contained in the present volume. See, however. Part One,
Chapter i, “The Field of Sociology," especially pp. 12-13. — Tr.

258 Subordination under a Principle

the significance which either of them may have for any subject.
Certainly, society, likewise, transcends the individual and lives
its own life which follows its own laws; it, too, confronts the
individual with a historical, imperative firmness. Yet, society's
‘*in front of" the individual is, at the same time, a "within."
The harsh indifference toward the individual also is an interest:
social objectivity needs general individual subjectivity, although
it does not need any particular individual subjectivity. It is
these characteristics which make society a structure intermediate
between the subject and an absolutely impersonal generality and
objectivity.

The following observation, for instance, points in this direc-
tion. As long as the development of an economy does not yet
produce objective prices, properly speaking; as long as knowl-
edge and regulation of demand, offer, production costs, amounts
at risk, gain, etc., do not yet lead to the idea that a given piece of
merchandise is worth so much and must have such and such a
fixed price — so long is the immediate interference of society and
its organs and laws with the affairs of commerce (particularly
in regard to the price and stability of commerce) much more
strong and rigorous than under other conditions. Price taxes,
the surveillance of quantity and quality of production, and, in
a larger sense, even sumptuary laws and consumers' obligations,
often emerged at that stage of economic development at which
the subjective freedom of commerce strove after stable objec-
tivity, without, however, yet being able to attain any pure,
abstract objectivity in determining prices. It is at this stage that
the concrete generality, the living objectivity of society enters,
often clumsily, obstructively, schematically, but yet always as a
super-subjective power which supplies the individual with a
norm before he derives this norm directly from the structure
of the matter at issue and its understood regularity.

On a much larger scale, this same formal development, from
subordination under society to subordination under objectivity,
occurs in the intellectual sphere. All of intellectual history shows
to what extent the individual intellect fills the content of its
truth-concepts only with traditional, authoritative conceptions
which are "accepted by all," long before he confronts the object
directly and derives the content of the truth-concepts from its

Society and ‘'Objectivity** 259

objectivity. Initially, the support and the norm of the inquiring
mind are not the object, whose immediate observation and
interpretation the mind is entirely unable to manipulate, but
the general opinion of the object. It is this general opinion
which mediates theoretical conceptions, from the silliest super-
stition to the subtlest prejudices, which almost entirely conceal
the lacking independence of their recipient and the un-objective
nature of their contents. It seems as if man could not easily bear
looking the object in the eye; as if he were equal neither to the
rigidity of its lawfulness nor to the freedom which the object,
in contrast to all coercion coming from men, gives him. By com-
parison, to bow to the authority of the many or their representa-
tives, to traditional opinion, to socially accepted notions, is
something intermediate. Traditional opinion, after all, is more
modifiable than is the law of the object; in it, man can feel
some psychological mediation; it transmits, as it were, something
which is already digested psychologically. At the same time, it
gives us a hold, a relief from responsibility — the compensation
for the lack of that autonomy which we derive from the purely
intrinsic relationship between ego and object.

The concept of objective justice, no less than the concept of
truth, finds ite intermediate stage, which leads toward the ob-
jective sense of “justice,** in social behavior. In the field of
criminal law, as well as in all other regulations of life, the
correlation between guilt and expiation, merit and reward,
service and counter-service, is first, evidently, a matter of social
expediency or of social impulses. Perhaps the equivalence of
action and reaction, in which justice consists, is never an analyt-
ical equivalence directly resulting from these elements, but
always requires a third element, an ideal, a purpose, a norm-
setting situation, in which the first two elements create or
demonstrate their mutual correspondence synthetically. Origi-
nally, this third element consists in the interests and forms of
the general life which surrounds the individuals, that is, the
subjects of the realization of justice. This general life creates,
and acts on, the criteria of justice or injustice in the relation
between action and reaction — of justice or injustice which can-
not be ascertained in the action-and-reaction in isolation. Above
this process, and mediated by it, there rises, at an objectively

260 Subordination under a Principle

and historically later stage, the necessity of the ‘‘just** corre-
spondence between action and reaction, a correspondence which
emerges in the comparison of these two elements themselves.
This higher norm, which perhaps even in this later phase con-
tinues to determine weight and counter-weight according to its
own scale, is completely absorbed by the elements themselves;
it has become a value which seems to originate with them and
operates out of them. Justice now appears as an objective rela-
tionship which follows necessarily from the intrinsic significance
of sin and pain, good deed and happiness, offer and response.
It must be realized for its own sake: fiat justitia, pereat mundus.
It was, by contrast, the very preservation of the world which,
from the earlier standpoint, constituted the ground of justice.
Whatever the ideal sense of justice may be (which is not the
topic of discussion here), the objective law, in which justice,
purely for its own sake, embodies itself, and which claims com-
pliance in its own right, is historically and psychologically a
later stage of development. It is preceded, prepared, and
mediated by the claim to justice stemming from merely social
objectivity.

This same development, finally, prevails within the moral
sphere, in the stricter sense of this term. The original content
of morality is of an altruistic-social nature. The idea is not that
morality has its own life independent of this content and merely
absorbs it. Rather, the devotion of the to the “thou** (in
the singular or plural) is the very idea, the definition, of the
moral. Philosophical doctrines of ethics represent, by compari-
son, a much later phase. In them, an absolutely objective
Ought is separated from the question of “I** and “thou.**
If it is important to Plato that the Idea of the Good be
realized; to Kant, that the principle of individual action be
suitable as a general law; to Nietzsche, that the human species
transcend its momentary stage of development; then, occasion-
ally, these norms may also refer to reciprocal relations among
individuals. But, essentially this is no longer important. What
is important is the realization of an objective law, which not
only leaves behind the subjectivity of the actor but also the
subjectivity of the individuals whom the action may concern.
For, now, even the reference to the societal complex of the sub-

The Effect of Subordination under a Principle 261

jects is merely an accidental satisfaction of a much more general
norm and obligation, which may legitimate socially and altru-
istically oriented action, but may also refuse to do so. In the
development of the individual as of the species, ethical obedi-
ence to the claims of the “thou*' and of society characterizes
the first emergence from the pre-ethical stage of naive egoism.
Innumerable individuals never go beyond obedience to the
“thou.** But, in principle, this stage is preparatory and transitory
to subordination under an objectively ethical law, which trans-
cends the “I” as much as the “thou,** and only on its own initia-
tive admits the interests of the one or the other as ethical
contents.

§ 5 . The Effect of Subordination under a Principle
upon the Relations between Superordinates
and Subordinates

The second sociological question in regard to subordination
under an impersonal-ideal principle concerns the effect of this
common subordination upon the reciprocal relations among
the subordinates. Here, also, it must above all be remembered
that ideal subordination is often preceded by real subordina-
tion. We frequently find that a person or class exerts super-
ordination in the name of an ideal principle to which the person
or class themselves are allegedly subordinated. This principle,
therefore, seems to be logically prior to the social arrangement;
the actual organization of domination among people seems to
develop in consequence of that ideal dependency. Historically,
however, the road has usually run in the opposite direction.
Superordinations and subordinations develop out of very real,
personal power relations. Through the spiritualization of the
superordinate power or through the enlargement and de-per-
sonalization of the whole relationship, there gradually grows
an ideal, objective power over and above these superordinations
and subordinations. The superordinate then exerts his power
merely in the capacity of the closest representative of this ideal,
objective force.

These successive processes are shown very distinctly in the
development of the position of pater familias among the Aryans.

262 Subordination under a Principle

Originally — this is how the type is presented to us — his power
was unlimited and wholly subjective. That is, the pater familias
decided all arrangements by momentary whim and in terms of
personal advantage. Yet this arbitrary power was gradually re-
placed by a feeling of responsibility. The unity of the family
group, embodied (for instance) in the spiritus familiaris, became
an ideal force, in reference to which even the master of the whole
felt himself to be merely an executor and obeyer. It is in this
sense that custom and habit, rather than subjective preference,
determined his actions, his decisions, and judicial decrees; that
he no longer behaved as the unconditional master of the family
property, but rather as its administrator in the interest of the
whole; that his position had more the character of an office than
that of an unlimited right. The relation between superordinates
and subordinates was thus placed upon an entirely new basis.
Whereas, at the first stage, the subordinates constituted, so to
speak, only a personal appurtenance of the superordinates, later
there prevailed the objective idea of the family which stands
above all individuals and to which the leading patriarch is as
much subordinated as is every other member. The patriarch can
give orders to the other members of the family only in the name
of that ideal unit.

Here we encounter an extremely important form- type,
namely, that the very commander subordinates himself to the
law which he has made. The moment his will becomes law, it
attains objective character, and thus separates itself from its
subjective-personal origin. As soon as the ruler gives the law
as law, he documents himself, to this extent, as the organ of an
ideal necessity. He merely reveals a norm which is plainly valid
on the ground of its inner sense and that of the situation,
whether or not the ruler actually enunciates it. What is more,
even if instead of this more or less distinctly conceived legitima-
tion, the will of the ruler itself becomes law, even then the ruler
cannot avoid transcending the sphere of subjectivity: for in this
case, he carries the super-personal legitimation a priori in him-
self, so to speak. In this way, the inner form of law brings it
about that the law-giver, in giving the law, subordinates himself
to it as a person, in the same way as all others. Thus, the
Privileges of the medieval Flemish cities stated expressly that

The Effect of Subordination under a Principle 26S

the jurors must give everybody a fair trial, including even the
Count who had bestowed this privilege upon the city. And such
a sovereign ruler as the Great Elector introduced a head-tax
without asking the estates for their consent — but then he not
only made his court pay it, but he also paid it himself.

The most recent history gives an example of the growth of
an objective power, to which the person, who is originally and
subsequently in command, must subordinate himself in common
with his subordinates. The example is formally related to the
case cited from the history of the family. In modern economic
production, objective and technical elements dominate over
personal elements. In earlier times, many superordinations and
subordinations had a personal character, so that in a given rela-
tionship, one person simply was superordinate, and the other
subordinate. Many of these super-subordinations have changed
in the sense that both superordinates and subordinates alike
stand under an objective purpose; and it is only within this
common relationship to the higher principle that the subordina-
tion of the one to the other continues to exist as a technical
necessity. As long as the relationship of wage labor is conceived
of as a rental contract (in which the worker is rented), it contains
as an essential element the worker’s subordination to the entre-
preneur. But, once the work contract is considered, not as the
renting of a person, but as the purchase of a piece of merchan-
dise, that is, labor, then this element of personal subordination
is eliminated. In this case, the subordination which the employer
requests of the worker is only — so it has been expressed — sub-
ordination ‘*under the cooperative process, a subordination as
compulsive for the entrepreneur, once he engages in any ac-
tivity at all, as for the worker.” The worker is no longer subject
as a person but only as the servant of an objective, economic pro-
cedure. In this process, the element which in the form of entre-
preneur or manager is superordinated to the worker, operates
no longer as a personal element but only as one necessitated by
objective requirements.

The increased self-feeling of the modern worker must, at
least partly, be connected with this process, which shows its
purely sociological character also in the circumstance that it
often has no influence upon the material welfare of the laborer.

264 Subordination under a Principle

He merely sells a quantitatively defined service, which may be
smaller or larger than what was required of him under the
earlier, personal arrangement. As a man, he thus frees himself
from the relationship of subordination, to which he belongs
only as an element in the process of production; and to this ex-
tent, he is coordinate with those who direct the production.
This technical objectivity has its symbol in the legal objectivit\
of the contract relation: once the contract is concluded, it stands
as an objective norm above both parties. In the Middle Ages,
this phenomenon marked the turning point in the condition
of the journeyman, which originally implied full personal sub-
ordination under the master: the journeyman was generally
called “servant” [Knecht]. The gathering of journeymen in
their own estate was centered upon the attempt at transforming
the personal-service relationship into a contractual relationship:
as soon as the organization of the “servants” was achieved, their
name, most characteristically, was replaced by that of “journey-
men.” In general, it is relative coordination, instead of absolute
subordination, which is correlated with the contractual form,
no matter what the material content of the contract may be.

This form further strengthens its objective character if the
contract is not concluded between individuals, but consists in
collective regulations between a group of workers on the one
side, and a group of employers on the other. It has been de-
veloped especially by the English Trade Unions, which in cer-
tain, highly advanced industries conclude contracts regarding
wage rates, working time, overtime, holidays, etc., with associa-
tions of entrepreneurs. These contracts may not be ignored by
any sub-contract that might be made between individual mem-
bers of these larger categories. In this manner, the impersonality
of the labor relationship is evidently increased to an extraor-
dinary degree. The objectivity of this relationship finds an
appropriate instrument and expression in the super-individual
collectivity. This objective character, finally, is assured in an
even more specific manner if the contracts are concluded for
very brief periods. English Trade Unions have always urged
this brevity, in spite of the increased insecurity which results
from it. The explanation of the recommendation has been that
the worker distinguishes himself from the slave by the right to

The Effect of Subordination under a Principle 265

leave his place of work; but, if he surrenders this right for a
long time, he is, for the whole duration of this period, subject
to all conditions which the entrepreneur imposes upon him,
with the exception of those expressly stipulated; and he has lost
the protection offered him by his right to suspend the relation-
ship. Instead of the breadth, or comprehensiveness, of the bond
which in earlier times committed the total personality, there
emerges, if the contract lasts very long, the length. Or duration,
of the bond. In the case of short contracts, objectivity is guaran-
teed, not by something positive, but only by the necessity of
preventing the objectively regulated contractual relationship
from changing into a relationship determined by subjective
arbitrariness — ^whereas in the case of long contracts there is no
corresponding, sufficient protection.

In the condition of domestic servants — at least, on the whole,
in contemporary central Europe — it is still the total individual,
so to speak, who enters the subordination. Subordination has
not yet attained the objectivity of an objectively, clearly circum-
scribed service. From this circumstance derive the chief inade-
quacies inherent in the institution of domestic service. This
institution does approach that more perfect form when it is
replaced by services of persons who perform only certain, ob-
jective functions in the house, and who are, to this extent,
coordinated with the housewife. The earlier, but still existing,
relationship involved them as total personalities and obliged
them — as is most strikingly shown by the concept of the “all-
around girl” ['*Mddchen fur alles **] — to “unlimited services*':
they became subordinate to the housewife as a person, precisely
because there were no objective delimitations. Under thoroughly
patriarchal (as contrasted with contemporary) conditions, the
“house" is considered an objective, intrinsic purpose and value,
in behalf of which housewife and servants cooperate. This re-
sults, even if there is a completely personal subordination, in a
certain coordination sustained by the interest which the servant,
who is solidly and permanently connected with the house,
usually feels for it. The “thou," used in addressing him, on the
one hand gives expression to his personal subordination, but
on the other, makes him comparable to the children of the house
and thus ties him more closely to its organization. Strangely

266 Subordination under a Principle

enough, it thus appears that in some measure, obedience to an
objective idea occurs at the extreme stages in the development
of obedience: under the condition of full patriarchal subordina-
tion, where the house still has, so to speak, an absolute value,
which is served by the work of the housewife (though in a higher
position) as well as by that of the servant; and then, under the
condition of complete differentiation, where service and reward
are objectively pre-deter mined, and the personal attachment,
which characterizes the stage of an undefined quantity of sub-
ordination, has become extraneous to the relationship. The
contemporary position of the servant who shares his master’s
house, particularly in the large cities, has lost the first of these
two kinds of objectivity, without having yet attained the second.
The total personality of the servant is no longer claimed by
the objective idea of the ‘"house”; and yet, in view of the general
way in which his services are requested, it cannot really separate
itself from it.

Finally, this form-type may be illustrated by the relationship
between officers and common soldiers. Here, the cleavage be-
tween subordination within the organization of the group, and
coordination which results from common service in defense of
one’s country, is as wide as can be imagined. Understandably
enough, the cleavage is most noticeable at the front. On the one
hand, discipline is most merciless there, but on the other hand,
fellowship between officers and privates is furthered, partly by
specific situations, partly by the general mood. During peace-
time, the army remains arrested in the position of a means which
does not attain its purposes; it is, therefore, inevitable for its
technical structure to grow into a psychologically ultimate aim,
so that super-subordination, on which the technique of the or-
ganization is based, stands in the foreground of consciousness.
The peculiar sociological mixture with coordination, which
results from the common subordination under an objective idea,
becomes important only when the changed situation calls atten-
tion to this idea, as the real purpose of the army.

Within the group organization of his specific content of life,
the individual thus occupies a superordinate or subordinate
position. But the group as a whole stands under a dominating
idea which gives each of its members an equal, or nearly equal.

The Effect of Subordination under a Principle 267

position in comparison with all outsiders. Hence, the individual
has a double role which makes his purely formal, sociological
situation the vehicle for peculiarly mixed life-feelings. The em-
ployee of a large business may have a leading position in his firm,
which he lets his subalterns feel in a superior and imperious way.
But, as soon as he confronts the public, and acts under the idea
of his business as a whole, he will exhibit serviceable and devout
behavior. In the opposite direction, these elements are inter-
woven in the frequent haughtiness of subalterns, servants in
noble houses, members of decimated intellectual or social circles,
who actually stand at the periphery of these groups, but to the
outsider represent all the more energetically the dignity of the
whole circle and of its idea. For, the kind of positive relation
to the circle which they have, gives them only a semi-solid posi-
tion in it, internally and externally; and they seek to improve
it in a negative way, by differentiating themselves from others.
The richest formal variety of this type is offered, perhaps, by the
Catholic hierarchy. Although every member of it is bound by
a blind obedience which admits of no contradiction, neverthe-
less, in comparison with the layman, even the lowest member
stands at an absolute elevation, where the idea of the eternal
God rises above all temporal matters. At the same time, the
highest member of this hierarchy confesses himself to be the
‘‘servant of servants.*' The monk, who within his order may have
absolute power, dresses himself in deepest humility and servility
in the face of a beggar; but the lowest brother of an order is
superior to the secular prince by all the absolute sovereignty
of church authority.

Chapter 5

Superordination and
Subordination and Degrees of
Domination and Freedom

THE CROSS-SECTION

through the phenomena of superordination and subordination
which has been presented, was arranged in terms of the question
regarding the exercise of domination by one or by many, and
by persons or by objective structures. But another cross-section
can be made in addition. This second viewpoint focuses upon
the sociological significance of the degree of domination, espe-
cially upon the correlation of varying degrees of it with freedom
and its conditions. The following investigations are oriented
along this second line.

§ 1 . Superordination without Subordinates

A group may contain numerous and highly articulated
superordinations and subordinations, either in a single hier-
archical structure or in a variety of co-existing relationships of
domination. In either case, the group, as a whole, will derive
its character, essentially, from subordination; as is shown with
particular clarity in states that are governed bureaucratically.
For the social layers expand downward in quick progression.
In other words, where super-subordination stands at all in the
foreground of formal sociological consciousness, the quantita-
tively preponderant side of this relationship, that is, of subordi-
nation, will color the whole picture. On the basis of very special
combinations, however, there may also emerge the impression
and the feeling that the whole group is superordinate. Thus,

268

Subordination without Subordinates 269

Spanish pride and contempt of labor stemmed from the fact
that for a long time the Spaniards used the subjugated Moors
as laborers. When they later destroyed the Moors (and expelled
the Jews), they yet retained the air of superordinates, although
there no longer were any corresponding subordinates. At the
time of their highest splendor, it was explicitly stated among the
Spaniards that, as a nation, they wished to occupy a position in
the world such as is occupied by noblemen, officers, and officials
within the single state. Something similar, but on a more solid
basis, had already appeared in the Spartan warrior democracy.
Sparta subjugated the neighboring tribes without enslaving
them, but, instead, left them their land and only treated them
as serfs. These subjects grew together into a low stratum in com-
parison with which the totality of the full citizens formed a
lordly class, however much procedures within this class were
democratic. This was not a simple aristocracy which, from the
beginning, constituted a homogeneous group along with the less
privileged elements. It was, in fact, the whole original state
which, without changing its status quo, underpinned itself with
a layer of conquered peoples, and thus made the totality of its
members into a sort of nobility. The Spartans repeated this
principle of general superordination even in a more special re-
spect: their army was graded in such a way that, in large part, it
consisted of commanding officers.

We encounter here a peculiar sociological form-type: where
characteristics of an element can originate only in the relation
between this and another element, and can derive their content
and significance only from this relation; yet these characteristics
come to be essential qualities of the element and no longer
depend on any interaction. The fact that one is the ruler pre-
supposes an object of one's domination; yet the psychological
reality can, to a certain extent, evade this conceptual necessity.
One of the motives, the inner motive which underlies this possi-
bility, is already alluded to by Plato. Plato maintained that domi-
nation as such, as a function, is always the same, in spite of the
innumerable differences in its extent and content. It is one and
the same capacity to command which must be possessed by the po-
litikos [statesman] and the basileus [king], by the despdtes [mas-
ter] and the oikonomos [house steward]. For this reason, accord-

270 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

ing to Plato, the real statesman is not necessarily the executive of
the highest state power, but he who possesses the '‘science of com-
mand’' — no matter whether or not he actually has something to
command. Plato thus goes back to the subjective ground of the
relationship of domination. This ground is not created with the
actual realization of a given case of domination, but exists irre-
spective of the existence of such a realization. The “born king”
does not need a country, so to speak, he is king; he does not have
to become king. If the Spartans did not develop a nobility among
themselves and yet felt like noblemen, and if the Spaniards had
the air of lords even though they no longer had any servants,
these phenomena have their deeper significance in the fact
that the reciprocal effects of the relationship of domination is
the sociological expression or actualization of inner qualities
of the subject. Whoever has these, is ruler by this very fact. One
side of the two-sided relationship of domination has been taken
out of it, as it were, and the reciprocal relation exists only in an
ideal form; but the other side does not thereby lose its intrinsic
significance for the relationship.

If this process occurs in all members of a larger group, it
finds expression in their reciprocal designation as “equals,” a
designation which does not specifically stress with respect to
what the equality exists. The citizens of Sparta who were en-
titled to vote, were simply called the homoioi [similar ones].
The aristocratic character of their political and economic posi-
tion over that of the other strata was self-evident. To designate
themselves, therefore, they used only their formal relation to
one another and did not even mention their relationship to
other strata, which, nevertheless, ought to have constituted the
content of the rank designation. A similar feeling is at the bottom
of the situation wherever aristocracies call themselves “peers.”
They exist, as it were, only for one another: others do not con-
cern them even to the extent where the designation of the col-
lectivity would express their superiority over them — and yet,
it is for the sake of this superiority that such a designation is

needed.i2

12 This is merely an example of a general sociological phenomenon. A number
of elements, making up a group, often have the same relation in regard to a certain
point which gives content and significance to the group interest in question. Some-

Subordination without Subordinates 271

There is a second way in which the idea of superordination,
without the logically required correlate of any corresponding
subordination, may be realized. This is found when forms,
which were developed in a large circle, are applied to a small
group whose conditions themselves do not justify the forms.
Certain positions within an extensive group involve a power,
a quantity of superordination, a significance, all of which are
lost as soon as these positions, without changing their form, are
repeated in a smaller circle. Nevertheless, even into the smaller
group, they introduce the note of superiority and command
which they possessed in the larger organization. This note, as it
were, has become a substantive quality of such a position; the
quality no longer depends upon the relationship which en-
gendered it originally. In this process, the mediating element
is frequently a ‘'title,** which in narrow conditions is often left
with hardly a trace of its power, but which retains the aplomb
conferred upon it by its origin in a larger group. In the fifteenth
century, the Dutch Rederykers, a sort of master-singers, had
kings, princes, archdeacons, etc., in each of their many groups.

times, this decisive point on which the elements converge is absent in any designa-
tion of the group, perhaps even in the consciousness of the members; and, although
they are equal only in regard to that one point, nevertheless, equality alone is
stressed. It has alreafly been mentioned that noblemen often designate themselves
as “peers." In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many French cities called their
jurymen and jurors by this same name. When the **Ges€llschaft fiir ethische Kul-
tur** [Society for Ethical Culture] was to be organized in Berlin, a brochure ap-
peared which was entitled “Preparatory Communications of a Circle of Like-
Minded Men and Women." Nothing indicated in regard to what their minds were
alike. In 1905, or thereabouts, a party was formed in the Spanish Chamber which
simply designated itself as the “Party of the Solidary." In the 'nineties, a faction of
the Munich artists’ association called itself “the group of the colleagues," without
adding to this title, which they used quite officially, what constituted the content
of the collegiate relationship and what distinguished this group from an organiza-
tion of colleagues among school teachers, actors, agents, or editors. These trivial
episodes contain the sociologically very striking fact that the formal relation among
certain individuals may supersede the content and purpose of this relation. For,
this could not occur in all these designations if they did not somehow reveal the
direction of the sociological consciousness. The fact that the elements of a group
have equal rights or like minds, or are colleagues, gains an extraordinary impor-
tance in comparison with any materials that are clothed in these sociological forms,
although the forms make sense only on the basis of the materials. And however
much the practical behavior is determined by the material not contained in the
title, nevertheless (as a closer study of such groups shows), it is, in innumerable
cases, also determined by the orientation toward these pure forms of relation-
ship and toward these formal structures, and by the effect of them.

272 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

I call attention to the “officers’* of the Salvation Army, and to the
“high degrees” of Freemasonry: in 1756, a chapter of the French
Freemasons declared its members “sovereign and born princes
of the whole order”; another chapter, a little later, called itself
the **Conseil des Empereurs d*Orient et d'Occident/'

But it is, of course, not only a change in the purely extensive,
numerical size of the groups that effects the application of an
originally superordinate position to conditions which leave it
with the stamp of superordination, while yet eliminating the
logically required subordination. Contractions in the intensity
of the group life also may bring this about. What destroyed the
whole Hellenic existence during the Empire was the shrinkage
of its range of significance, the loss of all deeper or far-reaching
content. But yet, an ambition which borrowed its ideals from the
great past, a feeling that it was possible or necessary to preserve
some kind of superiority, did survive that lost past. Thus orig-
inated an empty ambition which eventually suggested a feeling
of significance and prerogative, without any real superiority, to
the victor in the Olympiads, to an insignificant community
official, to the holder of a chair of honor or of a distinction (with
perhaps a statue erected in his honor), or to the orator who
had political influence, but was acclaimed with exultation only
for his rhetoric, by a public of loiterers. On the basis of its real
structure, the Greek society of the time could not have pro-
duced elevation above the average to which the social advantages
and privileges of this class of persons were raised. Derived from
the original significance of the community, which alone gave
such superiorities a basis, they were now cut down to much
smaller proportions, without changing their dimensions. Be-
cause of their very lack of content, they made possible a general
mania for socially elevated positions which lacked all down-
ward correlates.

Here we find, among other things, though in a certain sense
inversely, a strange trait, which is interwoven with many human
actions. It is shown in great purity by primitive “sympathetic
magic.” Man believes that he can evoke phenomena which lie
outside the sphere of human power, by himself producing them
on a smaller scale. Among many different peoples, the pouring
of water is a strong rain magic. The power of the general idea

Superordination in Lieu of Freedom 273

is everywhere so pervasive that any minimal or one-sided realiza-
tion of it seems to appropriate the idea; and, along with it, its
reality on much higher levels of extensity and intensity. A cer-
tain aspect of '‘authority’* shows us a special modification of the
type of behavior at issue here. The inner preponderance which
somebody has attained on the grounds of a particular achieve-
ment or quality, helps him very often gain "authority” in ques-
tions, matters, and directions which are entirely unrelated to his
actually demonstrated superiority. Here too, therefore, the par-
tially existing and partially justified "superordination” is trans-
mitted to a general relationship, which lacks the correlate of a
really "mastered” field. The paradoxical phenomenon of the
stratum which has become superordinate in an absolute sense,
and which lacks the logically required quantity of subordina-
tion — but has absorbed it, as it were, or possesses it only ideally
— is seen here merely in another context.

§ 2 . Superordination in Lieu of Freedom

I began by saying that a group as a whole may have the char-
acter of subordination without containing, in any practical and
tangible way, a corresponding measure of superordination. The
cases discussed form the counterpart of this phenomenon: in
them, a superordination appears to exist as if it were an absolute
quality, not based on any corresponding measure of subordina-
tion. Yet this is a rare form: the more general opposite of the first
type is the freedom of all. If liberation from subordination is
examined more closely, however, it almost always reveals itself
as, at the same time, a gain in domination — either in regard to
those previously superordinate, or in regard to a newly formed
stratum that is destined to definitive subordination. Thus the
greatest English constitutional historian notes at one point in
reference to the "Quarrel of Puritanism”: "Like every other
struggle for liberty it ended in being a struggle for supremacy.”
This general schema, of course, does not often realize itself in
pure form, but rather (for the most part) as one tendency among
many others operating at the same time, in fragmentary, dis-
torted, modified forms, in which, nevertheless, the fundamental
will to substitute superordination for freedom can always be

274 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

recognized. I now turn to the principal types of this tendency.

For the Greek citizen, in the field of politics, the two values,
superordination and freedom, could not even be clearly sepa-
rated. He lacked the sphere of individual law which would have
protected him from the claims and the arbitrariness even of the
community, that sphere which would have guaranteed him con-
stitutional freedom even in regard to the state. Freedom, there-
fore, properly existed in only one form: as participation in state
government itself. In its sociological type, this corresponds pre-
cisely to the communistic movements of antiquity, which did
not aim at the abolition of private property but at the greater
participation in it on the part of the disinherited. This basic
form of behavior is repeated even in the lowest stratum, where
it is impossible to speak of gaining any superiority: nevertheless,
the Greek slave uprisings hardly ever aimed at breaking the slave
fetters in general but, rather, at reducing their tightness and
making them more bearable. The uprisings stemmed from rebel-
lion against individual abuses of the institution of slavery, rather
than from the desire to abolish the institution altogether.

It makes a characteristic difference whether the protection
from dangers, the arrest of evils, or the winning of cherished
values, is to be attained by means of abolishing the sociological
form that bred these evils, or whether it is to be attained within
this form, which is thereby preserved. Where the general condi-
tions based on super-subordination are very solid, the liberation
of the subordinates often does not entail general freedom — which
would presuppose a fundamental change of the social form —
but only the rise of the subordinates into the ruling stratum.
The process contains a logical contradiction leading to practical
contradictions — a point which will be discussed later. The out-
come of the French Revolution for the Third Estate — in appear-
ance only the liberation of that estate from the privileges of the
privileged — involved the gain of superordination in the two
senses of the term indicated. By means of its economic power,
the Third Estate made the other, previously higher estates de-
pendent upon itself; but, this effect, and the whole emancipa-
tion of the Third Estate, derived its rich content and its impor-
tant consequences only because there existed (or, rather, there
was formed in the same process) a Fourth Estate which the Third

Superordination in Lieu of Freedom 275

could exploit and above which it could rise. For this reason, one
can by no means draw the simple analogy that today the Fourth
Estate wishes to do what the Third had done at that earlier
time.

Freedom here shows its connection with equality, even
though, at the same time, the unavoidable breakdown of this
connection. To the extent that general freedom prevails, there
also prevails general equality. For, general freedom only entails
the negative fact that there is no domination. This characteristic,
because of its negativity, may be common to elements which in
all other respects are highly differentiated. But equality, al-
though appearing as the first consequence or accident of free-
dom, actually is only the point of transition through which
human insatiability must pass once it seizes the oppressed masses.
Typically speaking, nobody is satisfied with the position which
he occupies in regard to his fellow creatures; everybody wishes
to attain one which is, in some sense, more favorable. Thus, if
the majority which got the worst of a situation feel a desire for
a heightened style of life, the expression which most easily sug-
gests itself to them will be the wish to have, and be, the same as
the upper ten thousand. Equality with the superior is the first
objective which offers itself to the impulse of one’s own eleva-
tion. This is shown in any kind of small circle, in school classes,
groups of merchants, or bureaucratic hierarchies. It is one of
the reasons why the resentment of the proletarian usually does
not turn against the highest classes, but against the bourgeois.
For it is the bourgeois whom the proletarian sees immediately
above himself, and who represents to him that rung of the ladder
of fortune which he must climb first and on which, therefore,
his consciousness and his desire for elevation momentarily con-
centrate.

As the first step, the inferior wants to be the equal of the
superior. But a myriad of experiences show that once he is his
equal, this condition, which previously was the essential aim
of his endeavor, is merely a starting point for a further effort;
it is the first station on the unending road toward the most
favored position. Wherever an attempt is made at effecting
equalization, the individual’s striving to surpass others comes
to the fore in all possible forms on the newly reached stage.

276 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

Equality, which is logically entailed by freedom as long as free-
dom operates in its pure and negative sense of mere not-being-
dominated, is by no means the definitive intent of freedom. Yet
man’s inclination to take an immediately required or attain-
able step in realizing his aims for the ultimately satisfactory step,
has often deluded him into believing this. In fact, a naive con-
fusion places superiority directly alongside equality, although
freedom pushes man far beyond it. Whether authentic or not,
the remark which a woman coalheaver made to an elegantly
dressed lady in 1848 is typically true: ‘Tes, Madam, now every-
thing will become equal: I shall go dressed in silk, and you will
heave coals!”

This is the inevitable result of what has already been men-
tioned before, namely, that one not only wants to have freedom,
but also wants to use it for some purpose. Thus, the “freedom
of the church” usually does not consist in the liberation from
superordinate secular powers alone, but, through this libera-
tion, in dominion over these powers. The church’s liberty of
teaching, for instance, means that the state obtains citizens who
are inculcated by the church and stand under its suggestion;
whereby the state comes often enough under the domination of
the church. It has been said of medieval class privileges that
they often were a means for helping to gain the freedom of
all, including the non-privileged, under a condition of tyranni-
cal pressure exerted upon all. But, once this freedom is attained,
the continued existence of privilege operates in a sense which
once more reduces general freedom. The freedom of the privi-
leged produces a situation whose inner structure, to be sure,
entails as its consequence or condition the freedom of all. But,
latently, this freedom carries within itself the preferential treat-
ment of the very elements from which it originated. Given the
freedom of movement which has been gained in modern times,
this preferential treatment is, eventually, actuated once more;
that is, it again restricts the freedom of all others.

This complement of freedom, domination, attains a special
form where the issue is the freedom of a group within a larger
association, especially the state. Historically, such freedom often
presents itself as the autonomous, more or less comprehensive
jurisdiction of that group. Here, therefore, freedom refers to

Superordination in Lieu of Freedom 277

the fact that the group as a whole, as a super-individual unit,
is master over its individual members. The decisive point is not
that the group has the right to impose anything particularly
arbitrary upon its members — this alone would not fundamen-
tally subordinate them to it — but that it has the general right
to have its own law. For, this right equalizes the group with the
larger association which administers law in general and thus
unconditionally subjects all who belong to it. Customarily,
therefore, the narrower group makes sure with great rigor that
its members subject themselves to its jurisdiction, because it
knows that its own freedom is based on this subjection. In
medieval Denmark, a guild brother could seek his right against
his fellow only before a guild court. He was not prevented by
external force from seeking such right, in addition, before the
public court, the king’s or the bishop’s; but where the guild
did not expressly permit this, it was considered wrong as regards
both the guild and the guild brother concerned, and was thus
sanctioned by fines to be paid to both. The city of Frankfort had
received the privilege from the Emperors that no outside court
would ever be resorted to against its citizens. In consequence of
this privilege, a Frankfort citizen was arrested, in 1396, because
he had sued fellow resident debtors before an outside court.

Freedom can always have the two aspects, of representing
an esteem, a right, a power, on the one hand, and an exclusion
and a contemptuous indifference on the part of the higher
power, on the other. It is therefore no negative case to the argu-
ment presented here, if the autonomous jurisdiction enjoyed
by medieval Jews in case of legal quarrels among one another,
appears to have embodied a certain degradation and neglect.
The situation of the Eastern Roman Jews under the Empire
was quite different. Strabo, for instance, reports of the Alex-
andrian Jews that they had their own Chief Justice who decided
their trials. This special legal position became a source of hatred
against the Jews, because the Jews asserted that their religion
claimed a particular jurisdiction possessed only by them. The
tendency appears even more pointedly in the case reported from
medieval Cologne where, for a short time, the Jews had the
privilege of having a Jewish judge decide trials even against
Christians.

278 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

In such situations, the individual member of the group was
perhaps no freer than he would have been under the law of
the land, but yet the totality of the group enjoyed a freedom
which the other citizens of the state felt to be an ostentatious
exemption. The privilege of a group with its own jurisdiction is
by no means based on the peculiar content of the law adminis-
tered by it; the fact that its members are subject only to this
law is formally already a freedom. The heads of the guilds fought
the collective jurisdiction of journeymen's organizations even
where the content of this jurisdiction was slight — concerning,
for instance, the maintenance of decency and good morals. But
they knew very well that the moral censorship, which was codi-
fied and exercised by these organizations, gave the journeymen
a consciousness of solidarity, of class honor, of organized in-
dependence, which constituted a support against the masters
and made the journeymen feel that they firmly belonged to-
gether. The heads of the guilds knew that the essential point
was this sociological form; and, that if they once conceded it,
the further extension of its contents depended only on the
power relations and economic conditions of the moment. The
general content of this freedom of the whole is the subjection of
the individual. It does not necessarily involve, therefore, his
materially greater freedom (as has already been suggested). The
doctrine of the people's sovereignty, as over against the prince's
— a doctrine which emerged during the Middle Ages — by no
means implied the freedom of the individual, but the freedom of
the church, rather than that of the State, to reign over him. And
when, in the sixteenth century, the Monarchomachists took over
the idea of the sovereign people, and based government upon
a sort of private legal contract between them and the ruler, they
did not intend to liberate the individual but, on the contrary, to
subject it to domination by religion and social rank.

In fact, the eminent interest of the subgroup, of the relatively
closed circle, in dominion over its members, and the exposed
position characteristic of such a prominent and privileged circle,
often brings it about that special jurisdictions are more rigorous
than the law of the larger association that permits the exemption
of the subgroup. The Danish guilds, of which I have already
spoken, decreed that, if a guild member broke a purchasing

Superordination in Lieu of Freedom 279

contract concluded with a guild brother, he, as the seller, had to
pay a fine to the buyer that was twice the fine he would have had
to pay to the king’s officer if the buyer had not been a guild
brother, and to all guild brothers a fine that was twice the fine
to the city. The structure of the larger group permits it to give
the individual more freedom than the smaller group can allow
because the existence of the smaller circle depends more im-
mediately upon the adequate behavior of every single member.
Moreover, the small circle must demonstrate again and again,
through the rigor of its jurisdiction, that it firmly and worthily
exercises dominion over its members with which it has been
entrusted, and that it gives the state power no occasion for any
corrective interference. But this dominion over its members,
in which consists the very freedom of the partial group, can
become worse than legal harshness. To be sure, up to the six-
teenth century, the relatively great autonomy of the German
cities greatly promoted their development. But later, it produced
an oligarchical government by classes and cousins which deeply
oppressed all who did not participate in it. Only the developing
state powers, in a battle lasting for almost two hundred years,
eventually managed to halt this tyrannical exploitation of city
freedom, and to^guarantee, once more, the freedom of the indi-
vidual in the face of it. Although, in principle, self-administra-
tion is a blessing, there is nevertheless the danger of local parlia-
ments being dominated by egoistic class interests. It is this almost
pathological exaggeration into which the correlation between
the attainment of freedom and its complement and content (as
it were), the attainment of domination, are transformed.

The type-process discussed here, then, is the development of
the group’s liberation — in which many participate in the same
way and which entails no subordination of others — into the
striving after superordination or the attainment of it. This type
is realized in a direction quite different from those discussed thus
far, that is, in the differentiation which usually occurs in low
strata that rise to freer or generally better life conditions. The
result of the process is very often this: certain elements of the
group, which ascends as a whole, actually rise but thereby be-
come part of the previously superordinate stratum, while the
remainder stays subordinate. Naturally, this is most likely to

280 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

occur where a distinction between superordinates and subordi-
nates already exists within the upward-striving layers. In this
case, after the rebellion against the generally superior stratum
is ended, the difference among the rebels reappears. During the
upward movement, this difference was relegated to the back-
ground; but now, with the uprising ended, those who previously
had a higher position become assimilated to the highest stratum,
while their erstwhile fellows-in-arms come to be pushed down
all the more definitely.

In part, the 1830 revolution of English workers followed
this type. In order to gain the right of parliamentary vote, the
workers formed an alliance with the Reform party and the
middle classes. The result was the enactment of a law which gave
all classes the right to vote — except the workers. The class strug-
gle in Rome, in approximately the fourth century B.C., took
its course according to the same formula. The wealthy Plebeians
who, in the interest of their class, desired connubiality and a
democratic process of occupying office, joined the middle and
lower classes. The success of the total movement was that those
points of the program which predominantly concerned full
citizens were achieved, whereas reforms designed to help the
middle class and the small peasants soon came to nothing. The
Bohemian revolution of 1848, in which the peasants abolished
the last remnants of feudalism, developed in the same way. Once
feudalism was eliminated, the differences in the positions among
the peasants came again to the fore, while before and during
the revolution, they had receded under the impact of the com-
mon subordination. The lower classes of the rural population
demanded the partition of the community lands. This at once
roused all the conservative instincts of the more well-to-do
peasants. They fought the claims of the rural proletariat, al-
though it was in alliance with them that they had just won a
victory over the masters, who had fought their claims in the same
way. It is very typical of the stronger element, which may, as a
matter of fact, have achieved most of the victory, to wish to har-
vest its fruits alone: the relatively preponderant share in the
success grows into the claim upon the absolutely preponderant
share in the gain.

For the realization of this scheme, it is of great sociological

Superordination in Lieu of Freedom 281

help (as has been emphasized) that there already exist a broad
class stratification, and that the more vigorous elements in the
rising stratum join the higher layer which they previously fought.
The originally relative difference between the better and worse
situated elements of that class thereby becomes absolute, so to
speak: for the privileged positions, the quantity of advantages
gained reaches the point where this quantity changes into a new,
advantageous quality. A procedure occasionally used in Spanish
America shows a formal similarity. It was applied to the particu-
larly gifted member of the colored population, who either in-
augurated or threatened a freer and better position for his race
in general. Such an individual was given a patent “that he should
be considered white.” By being assimilated into the ruling class,
his superiority over his fellows was replaced by equality with
the upper layer, an equality which he might otherwise have
gained for his whole race, and thus only, for himself. It is out of
a feeling for this sociological type that, for instance, in Austria,
some politicians, friendly toward labor, raised objections to
labor committees which, after all, were designed to attenuate
the oppression of the workers. The fear was that these committees
might develop into a workers’ aristocracy; that, because of their
privileged position which approached that of the entrepreneur,
the entrepreneur might more easily assimilate them to his own
interests; and that in this fashion, by this seeming progress, the
remaining workers were actually more exposed than before. In
the same way, generally, the chance of the best workers to rise
into the propertied class seems to document the progress of the
labor class as a whole. But this is only superficial; in reality, the
rise is by no means favorable to the workers, because it deprives
them of their best and leading elements. The absolute rise of
certain members is, at the same time, their relative rise over
their class, and thus their separation from it — a regular bleeding,
depriving the class of its best blood. For this reason, if a
mass rebels against an authority, the authority gains an im-
mediate advantage if it succeeds in causing the mass to choose
representatives who are to lead the negotiations. At least, the
overwhelming, smashing onslaught of the mass, as such, is broken
in this fashion; for the moment, the mass is checked by its own
leaders in a way in which the authority itself can no longer

282 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

succeed. The mass leaders exert the formal function of the
authority, and thus prepare for the re-entrance of the authority
into its dominating position.

§ 3. The Sociological Error of Socialism and Anarchism

All these phenomena lead into the most divergent directions,
but they have the same sociological core: the fact, namely, that
the quest for freedom and the attainment of freedom — in the
various, negative and positive senses of this word — at the same
time has, as its correlate or consequence, the quest for domina-
tion and the attainment of domination. Both socialism and
anarchism deny the necessary character of this connection. In
the discussion here presented, the dynamic equilibrium of the
individuals — which may be designated as social freedom — ap-
peared as a mere point of transition (real or only ideal), beyond
which the balance sank once more on one side. By contrast,
socialism and anarchism declare that the stability of this dyna-
mic equilibrium is possible once the general social organization
is articulated, no longer as super-subordination, but as the co-
ordination of all elements.

The reasons usually advanced against this possibility are not
at issue here. They may be summarized, however, as those of the
terminus a quo and those of the terminus ad quern. No measure,
it is argued, can eliminate natural differences among men, nor
can any measure eliminate the expression of these differences
through some upward-downward arrangement of commanding
and obeying elements. The technique of civilized labor requires
for its perfection a hierarchical structure of society, “one mind
for a thousand hands,” a system of leaders and executors. The
constitution of individuals and the claims of objective achieve-
ment, as well as the workers and the realization of their aims —
all coincide in the necessity of domination and subordination.
It is urged by causality and teleology alike; and it is this which
is the most definite and decisive justification of its indispens-
ability.

Historical development, however, shows sporadic beginnings
of a social form whose fundamental perfection could reconcile
the continuation of super-subordination with the values of free-

Super-Subordination without Degradation 288

dom. It is on behalf of this form that socialism and anarchism
fight for the abolition of super-subordination. After all, the
motivation of the endeavor lies exclusively in the feeling-states
of individuals, in the consciousness of degradation and oppres-
sion, in the descent of the whole ego to the lowness of the social
stratum, and, on the other hand, in the personal haughtiness
into which self-feelings are transformed by externally leading
positions. If some kind of social organization could avoid these
psychological consequences of social inequality, social inequality
could continue to exist without difficulties. Very often, one
overlooks the purely technical character of socialism, the fact
that it is a means for bringing about certain subjective reactions,
that its ultimate source lies in men and in their life-feelings
which are to be released by it. To be sure, the means — in accord
with our psychological constitution — often becomes the end.
The rational organization of society and the elimination of
command and subjection appear as values not questioned be-
yond themselves, values claiming realization irrespective of those
personal, eudaemonistic results. And yet, in these lies that real
psychological power which socialism has at its disposal to inject
into the movement of history. As a mere means, however, social-
ism succumbs tg the fate of every means, namely, of never being,
in principle, the only one. Since different causes may have the
same effect, it is never impossible that the same purpose may be
reached by different means. Insofar as socialism is considered
an institution depending on the will of people, it is only the first
proposal for eliminating those eudaemonistic imperfections
which derive from historical inequality. For this reason, it is
so closely associated with the need for abolishing these inequali-
ties that it appears synonymous with it.

§ 4 . Super-Subordination without Degradation

But if it were possible to dissolve the association between
super-subordination and the feeling of personal devaluation
and oppression, there is no logical reason why the all-decisive
feeling of dignity and of a life which is its own master, should
stand and fall only with socialism. Maybe this aim will be
achieved if the individual feeling of life grows more psycho-

284 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

logically independent of external activity in general and, in
particular, of the position which the individual occupies within
the sphere of this external activity. It could be imagined that,
in the course of civilization, work in behalf of production be-
comes more and more a mere technique, more and more losing
its consequences for the personality and its intimate concerns.
As a matter of fact, we do find as the sociological type which
underlies various developments, an approximation to this sepa-
ration of personality and work. While originally the two were
fused, division of labor and production for the market, that is,
for completely unknown and indifferent consumers, have later
permitted the personality increasingly to withdraw from work
and to become based upon itself. No matter how unconditional
the expected obedience may be, at this later stage it at least no
longer penetrates into the layers that are decisive for life-feeling
and personality-value. Obedience is merely a technical necessity,
a form of organization which remains in the separate sphere of
external matters, in the same way as manual labor itself.

This differentiation of objective and subjective life-elements,
whereby subordination is preserved as a technical-organizational
value which has no personally and internally depressing and
degrading consequences, is, of course, no panacea for all the
difficulties and sufferings that are everywhere produced by dom-
ination and obedience. In the present context, the differentia-
tion is merely the principal expression of a tendency which is
only partially effective and which in actuality never yields an
undistorted and conclusive result. Voluntary military service,
however, is one of its purest examples in our time. The intel-
lectually and socially highest person may subordinate himself
to a non-commissioned officer and actually tolerate a treatment
which, if it really concerned his ego and feeling of honor, would
move him to the most desperate reactions. But he is aware that
he must bow before an objective technique, not as an individual
personality, but only as an impersonal link requiring such dis-
cipline. This awareness, at least in many cases, prevents a feeling
of degradation and oppression from arising. In the field of eco-
nomics, it is particularly the transition from job work to machine
work and from compensation in kind to compensation in wage
which promote this objectification of super-subordination — as

Super-Subordination without Degradation 285

compared with the situation of the journeyman where the super-
vision and domination of the master extend to all aspects of the
journeyman's life, quite beyond the prerogative which accrues
to the master from the journeyman's role as a worker.

The same goal of development might be served by a further
important type of sociological formation. It will be recalled
that Proudhon wished to eliminate super-subordination by dis-
solving all dominating structures which, as the vehicles of social
forces, have become differentiated out of individual interaction,
and by once more founding all order and cohesion upon the
direct interaction of free, coordinate individuals. But this co-
ordination can perhaps be reached even if superordination and
subordination continue to exist — provided they are reciprocal.
We would then have an ideal organization, in which A is super-
ordinate to B in one respect or at one time, but in which, in
another respect or at another time, B is superordinate to A.
This arrangement would preserve the organizational value of
super-subordination, while removing its oppressiveness, one-
sidedness, and injustice. As a matter of fact, there are a great
many phenomena of social life in which this form-type is rea-
lized, even though only in an embryonic, mutilated, and covert
way. A small-sc!^le example might be the production association
of workers for an enterprise for which they elect a master and
foreman. While they are subordinate to him in regard to the
technique of the enterprise, they yet are his superordinates with
respect to its general direction and results. All groups in which
the leader changes either through frequent elections or accord-
ing to a rule of succession — down to the presidents of social
clubs — transform the synchronous combination of superordina-
tion and subordination into their temporal alternation. In doing
so, they gain the technical advantages of super-subordination
while avoiding its personal disadvantages. All outspoken democ-
racies try to attain this by means of brief office terms or by the
prohibition of re-election, or both. In this fashion, the ideal of
everybody having his turn is realized as far as possible. Simul-
taneous superordination and subordination is one of the most
powerful forms of interaction. In its correct distribution over
numerous fields, it can constitute a very strong bond between
individuals, merely by the close interaction entailed by it.

286 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

§ 5 . Coordination and Reciprocal Super-Subordination

In this, Stimer sees the essence of constitutionalism: ‘‘The
ministers,'' he says, “reign over their lord, the prince; the depu-
ties reign over theirs, the people/' But it is in an even deeper
sense that parliamentarism contains this form of correspondence.
Modem jurisprudence divides all legal conditions into those of
coordination and those of super-subordination. But it is likely
that the former also are often of the super-subordinate type,
which is practiced, however, reciprocally. The coordination of
two citizens may consist in the fact that neither of them has a
prerogative over the other. But inasmuch as each of them elects
a representative, and inasmuch as this representative co-deter-
mines the laws which are also obligatory for the other, a
relationship of reciprocal superordination and subordination
originates; more precisely, it does so as the expression of co-
ordination. This general form is of decisive significance for
constitutional questions. Already Aristotle recognized this when
he distinguished legal from factual participation in state power.
The mere fact that a citizen (in contrast to a non-citizen) is a
bearer of state power, is no guarantee that, within the organiza-
tion of citizens he ever has any function other than simple obedi-
ence. The individual who in respect to the military privileges
of the citizen is among the oligoi [the few who rule], the “haves,"
may, in respect to his share in the exercise of state power, belong
among those who “have" less, among the mere demos^ for the
reason, perhaps, that only people of high esteem can be elected
to office, while those of lower esteem are entitled only to partici-
pation in the ekklesia [popular assembly]. A state may be an
oligarchy in regard to the first relationship, military privilege;
but in regard to the second, state power, it may under certain
circumstances be a democracy. Here the official is subject to the
general state power whose bearers, in terms of practical organiza-
tion, are in turn subject to him, the official.

This relationship has been expressed, both in a more refined
and more general manner, by contrasting the people, as object
of imperium, with the individual, as a link coordinate with all
other individuals: in the first respect, the individual is an object

Coordination and Reciprocal Super-Subordination 287

of duty; in the second, a legal subject. This differentiation and
concomitant consistency of group life, which is effected by the
reciprocity of superordination and subordination, are further
increased if certain contents are taken into consideration to
which this form of group life applies. With full awareness of
the paradox involved, the strength of democracy has been
pointed out as being exemplified by the fact that everybody is
a servant in matters in which he has the greatest specialized
knowledge, but a master in things of general knowledge. That
is, in professional matters, he must obey the wishes of the con-
sumer or the regulations of the entrepreneur or of whoever
else gives him orders. By contrast, like all others, he is master as
regards the general, or political, interests of the collectivity, of
which he has no special understanding but only that which he
shares with the rest of the society. Where the ruler, it has fur-
ther been argued, is also the expert, the absolute suppression of
the lower classes is quite inevitable. If, in a democracy, the
numerical majority also possessed the concentration of knowl-
edge and power, they would exert a tyranny no less harmful than
that of an autocracy. In order to make sure that it does not
come to such a split between above and below but that, instead,
the unity of the whole is preserved, that peculiar combination
is necessary by which the highest power is entrusted to those
who, in respect to expert knowledge, are mere subalterns.

This interlacing of alternating superordinations and sub-
ordinations among the same powers also sustained the unity of
the idea of the state into which the parliamentary and ecclesiastic
constitutions fused after the Glorious Revolution in England.
The clergy had a deep antipathy for the parliamentary regime
and, above all, for the prerogative which it claimed even in
respect to the clergy. In its essential points, the truce came about
by the church retaining special juridicial power over marriages
and testaments, as well as sanctions concerning Catholics and
persons not attending church. In exchange, it gave up its doc-
trine of unchangeable “obedience” and recognized that the
divine world order had room for a parliamentary world order,
to whose special regulations even the clergy was subjected. Yet,
the church dominated the parliament because, in order to enter
parliament, one had to take oaths which only members of the

288 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

state church could take without difficulty, dissenters only by
some devious route, and members of other faiths not at all. The
ruling clerical and secular class was integrated in such a way
that, in the Upper House, the archbishops retained their seats
above the dukes; the bishops theirs above the lords; while all
parsons subordinated themselves to the patronage of the secular
ruling class. To compensate for this, the local cleric again
received the direction of the local community meeting. This
was the form of interaction which power factors, otherwise con-
tradictory, could attain, so that the state church of the eighteenth
century and a consistent organization of English life in general
came about.

The relationship of marriage, too, owes its inner and outer
firmness and unity, at least in part, to the fact that it comprises
a large number of interest spheres in some of which the one part,
and in others the other part, is superordinate. In this fashion,
there results an interpenetration, a consistency and, at the same
time, vitality of the relation which can hardly be atained in other
sociological forms. Probably, what is called the “equal rights"
of man and wife in marriage — as a fact or as a pious wish — is
actually to a large extent such an alternating superordination
and subordination. At least, this alternation would result in a
more organic relationship than would mechanical equality in the
literal sense of the term, especially if one recalls the thousand
subtle relations of daily life which cannot be cast in the form
of principles. The alternation also would make sure that mo-
mentary superordination does not appear as brute command.
This form of relationship, finally, constituted one of the closest
bonds in Cromwell’s army. The same soldier who, in military
matters, blindly obeyed his superior, in the hour of prayer
often made himself into his moral preacher. A corporal could
preside over the worship in which his captain participated in the
same way as all privates. The army which unconditionally fol-
lowed its leader once a political goal was accepted, beforehand
made political decisions to which the leaders themselves had to
bow. As long as it lasted, the Puritan army derived an extraordi-
nary firmness from this reciprocity of superordination and sub-
ordination.

The favorable result of this societal form depends on the

Coordination and Reciprocal Super-Subordination 289

fact that the sphere within which one* social element is super-
ordinate is very precisely and clearly separated from those
spheres in which the other element is superordinate. As soon as
this is not the case, constant conflicts over competencies develop;
and the result is not the strengthening, but the weakening of
the group. When a person, who in general is subordinate, oc-
casionally attains superordination in the field of his normal
subordination, the solidity of the group suffers greatly. It does
so, in part because of the rebellious character which usually
characterizes such a situation, in part because of the incapability
for superordination in a field in which the person ordinarily is
subordinate. While Spain was a world power, periodic rebel-
lions broke out in the Spanish army, for instance, in the Nether-
lands. No matter how terrible the discipline by which the army
was held together, nevertheless, it occasionally showed an insup-
pressible democratic force. The soldiers rebelled against the
officers in certain, almost calculable intervals, demoting them
and choosing their own. But these new officers were under the
control of the soldiers, and could do nothing which was not
approved of by all subordinates. The harm of such medley of
superordination and subordination in the same field needs no
comment.

In an indirect form, this harm also lies in the short office
term of elected officials in many democracies. Certainly, by this
method, as large as possible a number of citizens at one time or
another comes into leading positions; but, on the other hand,
long-range plans, continuous actions, consistently applied meas-
ures, and technical perfection, are often enough made impos-
sible. In the ancient republics, this quick alternation was not
yet harmful to the extent it is today, inasmuch as their adminis-
trations were simple and transparent, and most citizens had the
knowledge and training necessary for office. The sociological
form of the occurrences in the Spanish army — although the con-
tent was very different — show the same great evils which, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, appeared in the American
Episcopal Church. The congregations were seized by a feverish
passion to exercise control over their ministers — ^who were ap-
pointed, precisely, for the moral and ecclesiastical control of
their congregations. In consequence of this refractoriness on the

290 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

part of the congregations, clerics in Virginia were for a long
time appointed for one year only.

In a slightly modified manner, which is yet formally the same
in all essentials, this sociological process occurs in bureaucratic
hierarchies, where the superior is technically dependent upon
the subaltern. The higher official often lacks the knowledge of
technical details or of the actual objective situation. The lower
official usually moves in the same circle of tasks during all his
life, and thus gains a specialized knowledge of his narrow field
that a person who rapidly advances through various stages does
not possess. Yet, the decisions of such a person cannot be exe-
cuted without that knowledge of detail. Thus, under the Roman
Empire, the knights’ and senators’ right to state service did not
entail any theoretical training for it; the acquisition of the re-
quired knowledge was simply left to practice. But already in the
last stages of the Republic, this procedure had resulted in the
higher officials’ dependence upon their subalterns who man-
aged to produce a certain business routine since they did not
constantly change. In Russia, this is a general characteristic,
which is especially promoted by the particular manner in which
offices are occupied there. Advancement is according to rank
classes, but not only within the same department; rather, the
official who has reached a certain class is often transferred — on
his own or his superior’s wish — into a very different depart-
ment, but with the same rank. Thus, at least until recently, it
was by no means rare for a graduated student to become an offi-
cer with no more training than six months of service at the front,
and for an officer, by passing to the civil rank corresponding
to his military position, to receive some office in the civil state
service that he preferred. The way in which either of them
came to terms with his new situation, for which his training had
not prepared him, was his own affair. It is inevitable that such
a situation often results in the technical ignorance of the higher
official with respect to his position; and it is just as inevitable
that this ignorance makes him depend upon his inferior with
his expert knowledge. The reciprocity of superordination and
subordination thus often lets the actual leader appear as the
subordinate, and the actual mere-executor as the superordinate.
As a consequence, this reciprocity damages the solidity of the

Super-Subordination as a Form of Social Organization 291

organization as much as an expediently distributed alternation
of superordination and subordination can strengthen it.

§ 6. Super-Subordination as a Form of Social Organization
and as an Expression of Individual Differences;

Person vs. Position

Beyond these special formations, the fact of domination
poses the following quite general sociological problem. Super-
ordination and subordination constitute, on the one hand, a
form of the objective organization of society. On the other hand,
they are the expression of differences in personal qualities among
men. How do these two characteristics compare wdth one an-
other, and how is the form of sociation influenced by the differ-
ences in this relationship?

In the beginning of societal development, the superordina-
tion of one personality over others must have been the adequate
expression and consequence of personal superiority. There is no
reason why, at a social stage with no fixed organization that
would a priori allocate his place to the individual, anybody
should subordinate himself to another, unless force, piety, bodily
or spiritual or volitional superiority, suggestion — in brief, the
relation of his personal being to that of the other — determined
him to do so. Since the beginning of societal formation is histori-
cally inaccessible to us, we must, on methodological principles,
make the simplest assumption, namely, that of approximate
equilibrium. We thus proceed as we do in the case of cosmologi-
cal deductions. Since the beginning stage of the world process
is unknown, it was necessary to try the deduction of the origin
and progress of manifold and differentiated phenomena from
what was as simple as possible — the homogeneity and equili-
brium of the world elements. There is, of course, no doubt that,
if these assumptions are made in an absolute sense, no world
pracess could ever have begun, since there was no cause for
movement and specialization. We must, therefore, posit at the
initial stage some differential behavior of elements, however
minimal, in order to make subsequent differentiations under-
standable on its basis. In a similar way, we are forced, in the
development of social variation, to start with a fictitious simplest

292 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

stage; and the minimum of variation, which is needed as the
germ of all later differentiations, will probably have to be placed
into the purely personal differences among individual disposi-
tions. Among men, differences in reciprocal positions that are
directed toward the outside, will initially, therefore, have to be
derived from such qualitative individualizations.

Thus, in primitive times, the prince is required or assumed
to have perfections which are extraordinary in their extent or
combination. The Greek king of the heroic period had to be, not
only brave, wise, and eloquent, but also outstanding as an ath-
lete and, if possible, an excellent carpenter, shipbuilder, and
husbandman as well. It has been noted that the position of King
David rested largely upon the fact that he was, at the same time,
a singer and warrior, a layman and prophet, and that he had
the capabilities needed for a fusion of secular state power with
spiritual theocracy. This origin of superordination and subor-
dination, of course, still operates constantly in society and con-
tinuously creates new situations. But out of it have developed,
and are developing, fixed organizations of superordination and
subordination. Individuals are either born into them or attain
given positions in them on the basis of qualities quite different
from those which originally founded the super-subordination
in question.

This transition from the subjectivistic relationship of dom-
ination to an objective formation and fixation, is effected by the
purely quantitative expansion of the sphere of domination. The
connection between the increased quantity of elements and the
objectivity of the norms which are valid for them, can be ob-
served everywhere. Two, actually contradictory motives are sig-
nificant in it. The increase of elements entails an increase in the
qualitative characteristics existing among them. This greatly
increases the improbability that any one element with a strong
subjective individuality has identical or even generally satis-
factory relations to all others. To the extent that there is an
increase in the differences within the group over which domina-
tion or norm extend, the ruler or the norm must shed all indi-
vidual character and adopt, instead, a general character, above
subjective fluctuations.

On the other hand, this same expansion of the group leads

Super-Subordination as a Form of Social Organization 293

to the division of labor and differentiation among its leading
elements. Unlike the Greek king, the ruler of a large group can
no longer be the standard and leader of all their essential inter-
ests. What is required, rather, are manifold specialization and
specialized division of the regime. But the division of labor is
everywhere correlated with the objectification of actions and
conditions. It moves the labor of the individual into a context
which lies outside his proper sphere: the personality, as a whole
and as something intimate, is placed beyond any one-sided
activity. The results of activity, now circumscribed in purely
objective terms, form a unit along with those of other personali-
ties. It is probable that the totality of such causal chains has trans-
formed the relation of domination, which originated from case
to case and from person to person, into an objective form in
which not the person, but the position, so to speak, is the super-
ordinate element. The a priori elements of the relationship are
no longer the individuals with their characteristics, out of which
the social relation develops, but, rather, these relations them-
selves, as objective forms, as “positions,'' empty spaces and con-
tours (as it were) which must merely be “filled" by individuals.
The firmer and the more technically articulated the organiza-
tion of the group, the more objectively and formally do the
patterns of superordination and subordination present them-
selves. Individuals suited for the positions are sought only “after-
wards," or else the positions are filled by the mere accidents of
birth and other contingencies.

This by no means applies to hierarchies of governmental
positions alone. Money economy creates a very similar societal
formation in the spheres which are dominated by it. The pos-
session or the lack of a particular sum of money entails a certain
social position, an almost entire independence upon the personal
qualities of the individual occupant. Money has carried to its
extreme the separation emphasized a moment ago, between man
as a personality and man as the instrument of a special perform-
ance or significance. Everyone who can conquer or somehow
acquire the possession of money, thereby attains a power and a
position which appear and disappear with the holding of this
possession, but not with the personality and its characteristics.
Men pass through positions associated with the possession of

294 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

certain amounts of money in the way in which purely accidental
“fillings’" pass through rigid, solid forms.

It is obvious, however, that modern society does not every-
where exhibit this discrepancy between position and personality.
In fact, the separation of the position with its objective content
from the personality itself, frequently results in a certain elas-
ticity in the allocation of persons, and thus in a new, often more
rational basis for adequate proportioning. This is in addition to
the immensely increased possibilities that liberal orders provide,
in general, for the procurement of positions to which available
qualifications are adequate. Nor is this altered by the fact that
the relevant qualifications are often so specialized that the per-
sonality, in terms of its over-all value, nevertheless does not de-
serve the superordination attained through them. The discrep-
ancy involved here occasionally reaches its maximum in certain
intermediate structures, like estates and guilds. It has correctly
been emphasized that the system of big industry gives the excep-
tionally gifted man more opportunity to excel than did any-
thing prior to this system. The numerical proportion of foreman
and supervisor to workers, the argument runs, is nowadays
smaller than the proportion of petty masters to journeymen two
hundred years ago; but the special talent now has a much greater
chance of rising to a higher position. Here, the important point
is only the peculiar chance of the discrepancy between the per-
sonal quality and its position in terms of ruling or being ruled.
This chance has been brought about by the objectification of
positions and by their differentiation from purely personal, in-
dividual factors.

However much socialism abhors this blindly contingent
relationship between the objective scale of positions and the
qualifications of persons, its organizational proposals neverthe-
less amount to the same sociological form. For, socialism desires
a constitution and administration which are absolutely central-
ized and hence, by necessity, rigorously articulated and hier-
archical; but, at the same time, it presupposes that all individuals
are, a priori, equally capable of occupying any position whatever
in this hierarchy. But, in this fashion, that circumstance of con-
temporary conditions which appeared senseless is, at least in one
respect, elevated into a principle. For, the mere fact that in an

Aristocracy vs. Equality 295

ideally pure democracy those who are guided choose their guide,
offers no guarantee against the accidental character of the rela-
tion between person and position. It does not for two reasons.
The first is that, in order to choose the best expert, one himself
must be an expert. The other reason is that, in all very large
groups, the principle of choice from below produces entirely
accidental results. An exception to this are pure party elections
— where, however, the very factor whose meaningful or acci-
dental nature is in question here, is eliminated. For, the party
election as such is a vote for a person, not because of certain
personal qualities, but because this person is the anonymous
representative (to put it in extreme terms) of a certain objective
principle.

The form of leader creation which socialism ought to espouse,
if it seeks to be consistent, is the drawing of positions by lot.
The lot expresses the ideal claim of everybody much more ade-
quately than does the circulation of positions, which, besides,
cannot be perfectly carried out under large-scale conditions.
Yet, this by no means makes the lot itself democratic. In the first
place, the lot may also be resorted to under a ruling aristocracy:
as a purely formal principle, it has no connection with the con-
trast between democracy and aristocracy. In the second place,
and above all, democracy implies the actual cooperation of all,
whereas the drawing of leading positions by lot transforms actual
cooperation into ideal cooperation, into the merely potential
right of everybody to attain a leading position. The lottery prin-
ciple completely severs the mediation between the individual
and his position, the mediation which is represented by the
individual’s subjective qualification. With the lottery principle,
super-subordination as a formal, organizational requirement,
wholly overpowers personal qualities — from which, neverthe-
less, this requirement took its origins.

§ 7. Aristocracy vs. Equality

The problem of the relation between personal and mere
positional superiority branches out into two important sociologi-
cal forms. In view of the actual differences in the qualities of
men — differences eliminable only in a utopia — certainly, “do-

296 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

minion by the best** is that constitution which most precisely
and suitably expresses the inner and ideal relation among men
in an external relation. This, perhaps, is the deepest reason why
artists are so often aristocratically inclined. For, the attitude of
the artist is based upon the assumption that the inner signifi-
cance of things adequately reveals itself in their appearance, if
only this appearance is seen correctly and completely. The sepa-
ration of the world from its value, of appearance from its signifi-
cance, is the anti-artistic disposition. This is so in spite of the
fact that the artist must, of course, transform the immediately
given so that it yields its true, super-contingent form — which,
however, is at the same time the text of its spiritual or meta-
physical meaning. Thus, the psychological and historical con-
nection between the aristocratic and the artistic conceptions of
life may, at least in part, be based on the fact that only an
aristocratic order equips the inner value relations among men
with a visible form, with their aesthetic symbol, so to speak.

But an aristocracy in this pure sense, as government by the
best, such as Plato visualized, cannot be realized empirically.
One reason is that, thus far, no procedure has been found by
which “the best** could with certainty be recognized and given
their positions. Neither the a priori method of breeding a ruling
caste, nor the a posteriori method of natural selection in the free
struggle for the favored position, nor the (as it were) intermedi-
ate method of electing persons, from below or from above, has
proved adequate. But aside from these presuppositional diffi-
culties, there are others. Men rarely are satisfied with the superi-
ority of even the best among them, because they do not wish
any superiority at all or, at least, none in which they cannot
themselves participate. Furthermore, the possession of power,
even of power which was originally acquired in a legitimate
fashion, usually demoralizes, not always (to be sure) the indi-
vidual, but almost always organizations and classes. In view of
all these difficulties, it becomes understandable that Aristotle
should have held the following opinion. From an abstract stand-
point, he said, it befits the individual or family which in aret^
[virtue] excels all others to have absolute dominion over them.
But on the basis of practical requirements, it is necessary to
recommend a mixture of this domination with that of the mass;

Aristocracy vs. Equality 297

the numerical preponderance of the mass must be combined
with the qualitative preponderance of the particular individual
or family.

But the above-mentioned difficulties of the “dominion by
the best’' may lead, rather than to these mediating notions, to
the resigned proposition that general equality should be con-
sidered as the practical regulation. In this case, the argument is
that in comparison with the disadvantages of aristocracy — which,
logically, alone is justified — general equality represents the
lesser evil. Since it is definitely impossible to express, certainly
and permanently, subjective differences in objective relation-
ships of domination, subjective differences should altogether be
eliminated from the characteristics of the social structure, which
ought to be regulated as if these differences did not exist.

But since, as a rule, the question of greater or lesser evil can
be decided only by personal valuation, the same pessimistic
mood may also lead to the exactly opposite conviction. One can
argue that, in large as in small groups, there must be some gov-
ernment; and that, therefore, it is better that unsuited persons
govern than that nobody does. Moreover, one can argue that
the societal group must adopt the form of super-subordination,
from inner and objective necessity, so that it would be merely
a desirable accident if the place which is pre formed by objec-
tive necessity were indeed filled by the subjectively adequate
individual.

This formal consideration derives from quite primitive ex-
periences and necessities. The most obvious is that the form of
domination itself means or creates a social tie. More awkward
periods, which did not have a variety of interactional forms at
their disposal, often had no other means for effecting formal
membership in the collectivity than that of subordinating the
individuals, who were not immediately associated, to those who
were members a priori. After the earliest constitution, of com-
plete personal and property equality in the community, had
ceased to exist in Germany, the landless man lacked all rights
to any positive freedom. Therefore, if he did not wish to remain
altogether without connection with the community, he had to
join some lord, so that he could participate in this indirect
fashion, as a denizen, in the public organizations. The com-

298 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

munity was interested in his doing this, for it could not tolerate
any unattached individual in its territory. For this reason, Anglo-
Saxon law made it expressly the duty of the landless person to
subject himself to a lord [sich *'verherren"]. In medieval Eng-
land, too, the interest of the community required the stranger
to subordinate himself to a patron. One belonged to the group
if one owned a piece of its territory; those who lacked land and
yet wished to belong were forced personally to belong to some-
body who, in turn, was connected with the group in the original
manner.

The general importance of leading personalities, combined
with the relative irrelevance of their personal qualifications, is
found, in a formally similar manner, in several early elaborations
of the voting principle. The elections, for instance, of the medi-
eval English parliament seem to have been conducted with as-
tonishing negligence and indifference. The only important point
seems to have been that each district designated a member of
parliament; it was much less important who this member was.
This indifference also applied to the qualification of the voters
and, during the medieval period, was often striking. Whoever
happened to be present voted; it seems that often no value was
placed upon the legitimation of the voters, nor upon any particu-
lar number of them. This carelessness in regard to the electorate
was only the expression, evidently, of the carelessness in regard
to the qualitative and personal results of the election.

§ 8 . Coercion

Finally, in the same sense, there operates quite generally
the conviction that coercion is necessary for social organization,
the idea is that human nature simply needs coercion lest human
actions become completely purposeless and formless. For the
general character of this postulate, it is irrelevant whether sub-
ordination be under a person and his arbitrariness, or under
a law. There are, admittedly, certain extreme cases where the
formal value of subordination no longer makes up for the sense-
lessness of its content; but, aside from these, it is of only second-
ary interest whether the content of the law be a little better or
a little worse — exactly, it will be remembered, as was the case

Coercion 299

concerning the quality of the ruling personality. Here one could
refer to the advantages of hereditary despotism — a despotism
which, obviously, is to a certain extent independent of the
qualities of the person — particularly where it dominates the
over-all political and cultural life of large territories, and has
certain advantages over a free federation.

These advantages are similar to the prerogative of marriage
over free love. Nobody can deny that the coercion of law and
custom holds innumerable marriages together which, from the
moral standpoint, ought to break apart. In these instances, the
persons concerned subordinate themselves to a law which simply
does not fit their case. But in other instances, this same coer-
cion — however hard, momentarily and subjectively, it may be
felt to be — is an irreplaceable value, because it keeps together
those who, from the moral standpoint, ought to stay together
but, for some momentary ill-temper, irritation, or vacillation
of feeling, would separate if they only could, and thus would
impoverish or destroy their lives irreparably. The content of
marriage laws may be good or bad, may be or may not be applic-
able to a given case: the mere coercion of the law to stay together
develops individual values of an eudaemonistic and ethical
nature (not to#mention values of social expediency) which, ac-
cording to the pessimistic, perhaps one-sided standpoint pre-
supposed here, could never be realized in the absence of all
coercion. The mere consciousness of everyone that he is bound
to the other by coercion may, in some cases, make the common
life utterly unbearable. But in other cases, this consciousness
will bring about a tolerance, self-discipline, and thorough psy-
chological training which nobody would feel inclined to undergo
if separation were possible at all times. These traits are pro-
duced, rather, only by the desire to make the unavoidable life
in common at least as bearable as possible.

Occasionally, the consciousness of being under coercion, of
being subject to a superordinate authority, is revolting or op-
pressive — ^whether the authority be an ideal or social law, an
arbitrarily decreeing personality or an executor of higher norms.
But, for the majority of men, coercion probably is an irreplace-
able support and cohesion of the inner and outer life. In the
inevitably symbolic language of all psychology: our soul seems

300 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

to live in two layers, one of which is deeper, hard or impossible
to move, carrying the real sense or substance of our life, while
the other is composed of momentary impulses and isolated
irritabilities. This second layer would be victorious over the
first and even more often than it actually is; and, because of the
onslaught and quick alternation of its elements, the second
layer would give the first no opportunity to come to the surface,
if the feeling of a coercion interfering from somewhere did not
dam its torrent, break its vacillations and caprices, and thus,
again and again, give room and supremacy to the persistent
undercurrent.

In comparison with this functional significance of coercion
as such, its particular content is of only secondary importance.
Senseless coercion may be replaced by sensible coercion, but
even the latter has its significance, which is relevant here, only
in that which it shares with the former. Moreover, not only
the toleration of coercion, but also opposition to it — both to
unjust and to justified coercion — has for the rhythm of our
surface life this same function of inhibition and interruption:
to make conscious and effective the deeper currents of the most
intimate and substantial life, which cannot be inhibited by any
external means. Insofar as coercion is associated with some form
of domination, the association reveals that element in domina-
tion which is, as it were, indifferent to the quality of the ruler
and to any individual right to dominate, and which thus shows
the deeper sense of the claim to authority as such.

§ 9 . The Inevitably Disproportionate Distribution of
Qualifications and Positions

It is, in fact, impossible in principle that, in the scale of
super-subordination, personal qualification and social position
correspond to one another throughout and without remainder —
no matter which organization might be proposed for attaining
such a correspondence. The reason is that there are always more
people qualified for superordinate positions than there are such
positions. Among the ordinary workers in a factory, there cer-
tainly are very many who could equally well be foremen or
entrepreneurs; among common soldiers, many who are fully

Distribution of Qualifications and I'ositions 3U1

capable of being officers; among the millions of subjects of a
prince, doubtless many who would be equally good or better
princes. Rule “by the grace of God” gives expression to the fact
that not any subjective quality, but a super-human criterion,
decides who shall rule.

Moreover, the fraction of those who have attained leading
positions among those who are qualified for them, must not be
assumed to be greater than it is, merely on the recognition of
the fact that (surely) there also are a great many persons in
superordinate positions who are not qualified for them. For,
this sort of disproportion between person and position appears,
for several reasons, more considerable than it actually is. In the
first place, incompetence in a given position of control is espe-
cially visible; it is obviously more difficult to conceal than very
many other human inadequacies — particularly because so many
other men, thoroughly qualified for this same position, stand
aside as subordinates. Furthermore, this disproportion often
results not from individual shortcomings at all, but from contra-
dictory requirements of the office; nevertheless, the inevitable
consequences of these requirements are easily ascribed to the
office occupant as his subjective faults. The idea of modern “state
government,” for instance, connotes an infallibility which is
the expression of its (in principle) absolute objectivity. Measured
by this ideal infallibility, it is natural that its actual executives
should often appear inadequate.

In reality, purely individual shortcomings of leading per-
sonalities are relatively rare. If one considers the senseless and
uncontrollable accidents through which men obtain their posi-
tions in all fields, the fact that not a very much greater sum of
incapabilities manifests itself in their occupancies would be an
incomprehensible miracle, if one did not have to assume that
the latent qualifications for the positions exist in very great
diffusion. This very assumption underlies the phenomenon that,
under republican constitutions, the candidate for office is some-
times investigated only for negative traits; that is, it is merely
asked whether he has, in some way, made himself unworthy of
the office. Thus, in Athens, appointment was by lot, and the
only questions examined were whether the candidate treated
his parents well, paid his taxes, etc., in other words, whether

S02 Degrees of Domination and Freedom

there was anything against him — the assumption being that
everybody was a priori worthy of the office. This is the deeper
justification of the proverb: “If God gives somebody an office,
he also gives him the mind necessary for it.” For, precisely, the
“mind” required for the occupancy of higher positions exists
in many men, but it proves, develops, reveals itself only once
they occupy the position.

This incommensurability between the quantity of qualifica-
tions for superordination and the quantity of their possible
applications, can perhaps be explained in terms of the difference
between the character of man as a group member and as an
individual. The group as such is low and in need of guidance.
It develops qualities which all members have in common. But
they are only those qualities which are securely inherited, that
is, more primitive and undifferentiated traits or traits easily
suggested — in short, “subordinate” qualities. Once a group of
any size is formed, therefore, it is expedient that the whole mass
organize itself in the form of subordination to a few. This, evi-
dently, does not prevent any given individual member from
having higher and finer qualities. But these are individual. They
transcend in various respects what all have in common, and thus
do not raise the low level of the qualities in which they coincide.
From all this, it follows that the group as a whole needs a leader,
and that, therefore, there can be many subordinates but only
few superordinates — but that, on the other hand, every indi-
vidual member of the group is more highly qualified than he
is as a group element, that is, as a subordinate.

All social formations thus involve this contradiction be-
tween the just claim to a superordinate position and the tech-
nical impossibility of satisfying this claim. The arrangement
by estates and the contemporary order come to terms with this
contradiction by building the classes one on top of the other,
with an ever smaller number of members in the upward direc-
tion, in the form of a pyramid, thereby limiting from the be-
ginning the number of those “qualified” for leading positions.
This selection is not based on the individuals available, but
inversely, it prejudges these individuals. Out of a mass of equals,
not everyone can be brought into the position he deserves. For
this reason, the arrangements just mentioned may be considered

Distribution of Qualifications and Positions 303

as the attempt at training the individuals for predetermined
positions, from the standpoint of these positions.

But instead of the slowness with which heredity and educa-
tion, that is commensurate with rank, may succeed in this train-
ing, there also are acute procedures, so to speak. They serve, by
means of authoritative or mystical edict, to equip the person-
ality with the capability of leading and ruling, irrespective of
his previous quality. For the tutelary state of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the subject was incapable of any par-
ticipation in public affairs; in political respects, he remained
permanently in need of guidance. But the moment he occupied
a state office, he at once attained the higher insights and the
public spirit which enabled him to direct the collectivity — as
if, by the sheer occupancy of office, there had emerged out of
the immature person, through an inexplicable birth, not only
the mature individual, but the leader equipped with all the
prerequisites of intellect and character. This tension between
everyone's a priori lack of qualification for a certain superiority
and the absolute qualification which he acquires a posteriori
through the interference of a higher authority, reaches its peak
in Catholic clergy. Here, family tradition, or education from
childhood on, j)lay no role. Even the personal quality of the
candidate is unimportant in comparison to the spirit which
exists in mystical objectivity and which is bestowed upon him
through consecration to priesthood. The superior position is not
given to him because he alone is naturally predestined for it —
although this may, of course, be of some importance and does
form the basis for a certain differentiation among those ad-
mitted. Nor is it given to him on the greater chance of his being
“called" rather than not. No, the consecration creates the special
qualification for the position to which it calls the individual,
because it transfers the spirit to him. The principle of God
giving an office and the required competence along with it is
here realized in the most radical fashion, in both of its two
dimensions — unfitness prior to the occupancy, and subsequent
fitness created by the “office" itself.

Part Fjour

The Secret and the
Secret Society

Chapter 1

Knowledge, Truth, and
Falsehood in Human Relations

OBVIOUSLY, ALL RELATIONS

which people have to one another are based on their knowing
something about one another. The merchant knows that his
correspondent wants to buy at the lowest possible price, and to
sell at the highest possible price. The teacher knows that he can
tax the student with a certain kind and amount of learning
material. Within each social stratum, an individual knows how
much culture, approximately, he may expect of every other
individual. Without such knowledge, evidently, these and many
other kinds of interaction could not take place at all. One may
say (with reservations which easily suggest themselves) that in
all relations of a personally differentiated sort, intensity and
nuance develop in the degree in which each party, by words
and by mere existence, reveals itself to the other. How much
error and mere prejudice may be contained in all this knowl-
edge, is another question. Yet, just as our apprehension of ex-
ternal nature, along with elusions and inadequacies, neverthe-
less attains the truth required for the life and progress of our
species, so everybody knows, by and large correctly, the other
person with whom he has to deal, so that interaction and relation
become possible.

§ 1. Knowledge of One Another

The first condition of having to deal with somebody at all
is to know with whom one has to deal. The fact that people
usually introduce themselves to one another whenever they
engage in a conversation of any length or meet on the same

307

308 Knowledge, Truth, Falsehood in Human Relations

social level, may strike one as an empty form; yet it is an adequate
symbol of the mutual knowledge presupposed by every relation-
ship. We are very often not conscious of this because, for a
large number of relations, we need to know only that quite
typical tendencies and qualities are present on both sides. The
necessary character of these tendencies is usually noted only
when, on occasion, they are absent. It would be worth a special
investigation to find out the kind and degree of reciprocal
knowledge required by various relations among people; to find
out how the general psychological assumptions, with which
everybody approaches everybody else, are interwoven with the
special experiences in regard to the particular individual with
whom we interact; how, in many fields, reciprocal knowledge
does not have to be equal on both sides or is not permitted to
be; to discover how the development of existing relations is
determined merely by the growing knowledge, on both sides
or on one side, about the other; finally, on the other hand, how
our objectively psychological picture of the other individual
is influenced by real, practical and sentimental, relations.

This last influence is by no means one of mere falsification.
It is entirely legitimate that the theoretical conception we have
of a particular individual should vary with the standpoint from
which it is formed, a standpoint which is the result of the over-
all relation between knower and known. One can never know
another person absolutely, which would involve knowledge of
every single thought and mood. Nevertheless, one forms some
personal unity out of those of his fragments in which alone he
is accessible to us. This unity, therefore, depends upon the
portion of him which our standpoint permits us to see. But such
differences by no means arise from differences in the quantity
of knowledge alone. No psychological knowledge is a mere
stereotype of its object but depends, as does the knowledge of
external nature, upon the forms which the cognizing mind
brings to it and in which it receives the given. But where the
knowledge of individuals is at issue, these forms differ very much
individually. They do not attain the scientific generality and
super-subjective power of conviction which can be reached with
respect to external nature and to merely typical psychological
processes.

Knowledge of Nature and of Persons 309

§ 2 . Knowledge of External Nature vs.

Knowledge of Persons

If A and B have different conceptions of M, this by no means
necessarily implies incompleteness or deception. Rather, in view
of the relation in which A stands to M, A’s nature and the total
circumstances being what they are, A’s picture of M is true for
him in the same manner in which, for B, a different picture is
true. It would be quite erroneous to say that, above these two
pictures, there is the objectively correct knowledge about M,
and that A’s and B’s images are legitimated to the extent to
which they coincide with this objective knowledge. Rather, the
ideal truth which the picture of M in the conception of A ap-
proaches — to be sure, only asymptotically — is something dif-
ferent, even as an ideal, from that of B. It contains as an integrat-
ing, form-giving precondition the psychological peculiarity of
A and the particular relation into which A and M are brought
by their specific characters and destinies.

Every relationship between persons gives rise to a picture of
each in the other; and this picture, obviously, interacts with
the actual relation. The relation constitutes the condition under
which the conception, that each has of the other, takes this or
that shape and has its truth legitimated. On the other hand, the
real interaction between the individuals is based upon the pic-
tures which they acquire of one another. Here we have one of
the deep-lying circuits of intellectual life, where an element
presupposes a second element which yet, in turn, presupposes
the first. While, in narrow fields, this is a fallacy that invalidates
everything, in more general and fundamental fields it is the
inevitable expression of the unity into which both elements
fuse, a unity which, with our forms of thought, cannot be ex-
pressed otherwise than by saying that we build the first upon
the second and, at the same time, the second upon the first. Our
relationships thus develop upon the basis of reciprocal knowl-
edge, and this knowledge upon the basis of the actual relations.
Both are inextricably interwoven. In their alternation within
sociological interaction, they reveal interaction as one of the
points where being and conceiving make their mysterious unity
empirically felt.

308 Knowledge, Truth, Falsehood in Human Relations

Knowledge of Nature and of Persons 309

§ 2. Knowledge of External Nature vs.

Knowledge of Persons

310 Knowledge, Truth, Falsehood in Human Relations
§ 3. Truth, Error, and Social Life

Our conduct is based upon our knowledge of total reality.
But this knowledge is characterized by peculiar limitations and
distortions. That “error alone is life, and knowledge, death§ **
cannot, of course, be valid as a principle, because a person caught
in continuous error would continuously act in an inexpedient
fashion, and thus inevitably would perish. And yet, in view
of our accidental and defective adaptations to our life conditions,
there is no doubt that we preserve and acquire not only so much
truth, but also so much ignorance and error, as is appropriate
for our practical activities. We have only to think of the great
insights which transform human life, but which fail to make
their appearance or go unnoticed, unless the total cultural situa-
tion renders them possible and useful. Or we may think, on the
other hand, of the ''LebensliXge” [“vital lie**] of the individual
who is so often in need of deceiving himself in regard to his
capacities, even in regard to his feelings, and who cannot do
without superstition about gods and men, in order to maintain
his life and his potentialities. In the sense that the expediency
of the external as of the internal life sees to it that we obtain
the exact amounts of error and truth which constitute the basis
of the conduct required of us, error and truth are psychologically
coordinate — although, of course, only by and large, and with a
wide latitude for variations and defective adaptations.

§ 4. The Individual as an Object of Knowledge

But within the range of objects, which we may know cor-
rectly or about which we may be deceived, there is a section
wherein both truth and deception can attain a character that is
not found anywhere else. This is the inner life of the individual
with whom we interact. He may, intentionally either reveal the
truth about himself to us, or deceive us by lie and concealment.
No other object of knowledge can reveal or hide itself in the
same way, because no other object modifies its behavior in view
of the fact that it is recognized. This modification, of course,
does not occur always; very often, even the other individual is
basically no more to us than a piece of nature which poses for

The Nature of the Psychic Process 311

our cognition, as it were. Insofar as this cognition goes by utter-
ances made by the other, and particularly by utterances which
are not modified by any thought of being utilized for our cog-
nition but which are wholly spontaneous and immediate com-
munications, there becomes apparent an element of fundamental
importance for the determination of the individual by his en-
vironment. Our psychic process, which runs its course in a
purely natural manner, is nevertheless, as far as its content is
concerned, almost always, at the same time, in accordance with
the norms of logic. This has been declared a problem; and the
most far-reaching conclusions have been drawn from it.

§5. The Nature of the Psychic Process and
of Communication

In fact, it is most remarkable that an event engendered ex-
clusively by natural causes should proceed as if governed by the
ideal laws of logic. For, it is exactly as if a tree branch, so con-
nected with a telegraphic apparatus that its movements in the
wind set the apparatus in motion, thereby caused signs in it that
yield a rational meaning to us. The whole of this problem is not
at issue here; but one remark must be made. Our actual psy-
chological processes are governed by logic in a much slighter
degree than their expressions make us believe. If we look closely
at our conceptions as they pass our consciousness in a continuous
temporal sequence, we find that there is a very great distance
between any regulation by rational norms and the characteristics
of these conceptions: namely, their flaring up, their zigzag mo-
tions, the chaotic whirling of images and ideas which objectively
are entirely unrelated to one another, and their logically un-
justifiable, only so-to-speak probative, connections. But we are
only rarely conscious of this, because the accents of our interests
lie merely on the “usable” portion of our imaginative life.
Usually we quickly pass over, or “overhear,” its leaps, its non-
rationality, its chaos, in spite of their psychological factualness,
in favor of what is logical or otherwise useful, at least to some
extent.

All we communicate to another individual by means of
words or perhaps in another fashion — even the most subjective.

812 Knowledge, Truth, Falsehood in Human Relations

impulsive, intimate matters — is a selection from that psycholog-
ical-real whole whose absolutely exact report (absolutely exact
in terms of content and sequence) would drive everybody into
the insane asylum — if a paradoxical expression is permissible.
In a quantitative sense, it is not only fragments of our inner life
which we alone reveal, even to our closest fellowmen. What is
more, these fragments are not a representative selection, but
one made from the standpoint of reason, value, and relation to
the listener and his understanding. Whatever we say, as long as
it goes beyond mere interjection and minimal communication,
is never an immediate and faithful presentation of what really
occurs in us during that particular time of communication, but
is a transformation of this inner reality, teleologically directed,
reduced, and recomposed. With an instinct automatically pre-
venting us from doing otherwise, we show nobody the course
of our psychic processes in their purely causal reality and — from
the standpoints of logic, objectivity, and meaningfulness — com-
plete incoherence and irrationality. Always, we show only a
section of them, stylized by selection and arrangement. We sim-
ply cannot imagine any interaction or social relation or society
which are not based on this teleologically determined non-
knowledge of one another. This intrinsic, a priori, and (as it
were) absolute presupposition includes all relative differences
which are familiar to us under the concepts of sincere revelations
and mendacious concealments.

§ 6 . The Lie

Every lie, no matter how objective its topic, engenders by
its very nature an error concerning the lying subject. The lie
consists in the fact that the liar hides his true idea from the
other. Its specific nature is not exhaustively characterized by
the fact that the person lied-to has a false conception about the
topic or object; this the lie shares with common error. What
is specific is that he is kept deceived about the private opinion
of the liar.

Truthfulness and lie are of the most far-reaching significance
for relations among men. Sociological structures differ pro-
foundly according to the measure of lying which operates in

The Lie S13

them. In the first place, in very simple circumstances the lie
is often more harmless in regard to the maintenance of the group
than under more complex conditions. Primitive man who lives
in a small group, who satisfies his needs through his own pro-
duction or through direct cooperation, who limits his intellec-
tual interests to his own experiences or to unilinear tradition,
surveys and controls the material of his life more easily and com-
pletely than does the man of higher cultures. To he sure, the
innumerable errors and superstitions in the life of primitive
man are harmful enough to him, but far less so than are corre-
sponding ones in advanced epochs, because the practice of his
life is guided in the main by those few facts and circumstances
of which his narrow angle of vision permits him to gain directly
a correct view. In a richer and larger cultural life, however,
existence rests on a thousand premises which the single indi-
vidual cannot trace and verify to their roots at all, but must take
on faith. Our modern life is based to a much larger extent than
is usually realized upon the faith in the honesty of the other.
Examples are our economy, which becomes more and more a
credit economy, or our science, in which most scholars must
use innumerable results of other scientists which they cannot
examine. We .base our gravest decisions on a complex system
of conceptions, most of which presuppose the confidence that
we will not be betrayed. Under modern conditions, the lie,
therefore, becomes something much more devastating than it
was earlier, something which questions the very foundations of
our life. If among ourselves today, the lie were as negligible a
sin as it was among the Greek gods, the Jewish patriarchs, or
the South Seas islanders; and if we were not deterred from it
by the utmost severity of the moral law; then the organization
of modern life would be simply impossible; for, modern life is
a “credit economy** in a much broader than a strictly economic
sense.

These historical differences are paralleled by distances of
other dimensions as well. The farther removed individuals are
from our most intimate personality, the more easily can we come
to terms with their untruthfulness, both in a practical and in
an intimate psychological sense — ^while if the few persons closest
to us lie, life becomes unbearable. This is a banality, but it must

314 Knowledge, Truth, Falsehood in Human Relations

be noted in a sociological light, because it shows that the meas-
ures of truthfulness and mendacity which are compatible with
the existence of certain conditions, constitute a scale on which
the measures of intensity of these conditions can be read off.

In addition to this relative sociological permissibility of the
lie under primitive circumstances, there is also its positive ex-
pediency. Where a first organization, arrangement, centralization
of the group is at stake, this organization will take place through
the subordination of the weak under the physically and intellec-
tually superior. The lie which maintains itself, which is not
seen through, is undoubtedly a means of asserting intellectual
superiority and of using it to control and suppress the less in-
telligent. It is an intellectual club law as brutal, but on occasion
as appropriate, as physical club law. It may operate as a selecting
factor to breed intelligence or create leisure for the few for
whom others must work; for the few who need the leisure for
producing higher cultural goods or for giving a leader to the
group forces. The more easily these aims can be reached by
means whose incidental consequences are only slightly unde-
sirable, the less is there need for lying, and the more is there
room for being aware of its ethically objectionable character.
Historically this process is by no means completed. Even today,
retail trade believes that it cannot do without mendacious claims
concerning certain merchandise, and therefore practices them
with good conscience. But wholesale business and retail trade
on a really large scale, have overcome this stage and can afford
to proceed with complete sincerity when offering their goods.
Once the business practice of the small and middle-sized mer-
chant reaches the same perfection, the exaggerations and out-
right falsehoods of advertising and praising, for which it is not
usually blamed today, will meet with the same ethical condem-
nation which already is meted out wherever these falsehoods
are no longer required by practice. In general, intra-group inter-
action based on truthfulness will be the more appropriate, the
more the welfare of the many, rather than of the few, constitutes
the norm of the group. For, those who are lied-to, that is, those
who are harmed by the lie, will always constitute the majority
over the liars who find their advantage in lying. For this reason,

The Lie 315

‘‘enlightenment,” which aims at the removal of the untruths
operating in social life, is entirely democratic in character.

Human interaction is normally based on the fact that the
ideational worlds of men have certain elements in common,
that objective intellectual contents constitute the material which
is transformed into subjective life by means of men’s social rela-
tions. The type, as well as the essential instrument, of these
common elements is shared language. But, on closer examina-
tion, it appears that the basis discussed here, by no means con-
sists only in what both of two interacting individuals know, or
with what they are acquainted as the phychological content of
one another. For, it must also be noted that all of this is inter-
woven with elements known to only one of the two. This limita-
tion reveals significances even more basic than those which re-
sult from the contrast between the non-logical and contingent
reality of the ideational process and the logical and teleological
selection we make of it in order to show it to others. Human
nature is dualistic: we feel that each of its expressions Hows from
a plurality of divergent sources; we consider each measure of it
as great or small, according to its comparison with something
smaller or greater.

This same dualism also causes sociological relationships to
be determined in a twofold manner. Concord, harmony, co-
efficacy, which are unquestionably held to be socializing forces,
must nevertheless be interspersed with distance, competition,
repulsion, in order to yield the actual configuration of society.
The solid, organizational forms which seem to constitute or
create society, must constantly be disturbed, disbalanced,
gnawed-at by individualistic, irregular forces, in order to gain
their vital reaction and development through submission and
resistance. Intimate relations, whose formal medium is physical
and psychological nearness, lose the attractiveness, even the
content of their intimacy, as soon as the close relationship does
not also contain, simultaneously and alternatingly, distances and
intermissions. Finally, and this is the decisive point: although
reciprocal knowledge conditions relationships positively, after
all, it does not do this by itself alone. Relationships being what
they are, they also presuppose a certain ignorance and a measure
of mutual concealment, even though this measure varies im-

316 Knowledge, Truth, Falsehood in Human Relations

mensely, to be sure. The lie is merely a very crude and, ulti-
mately, often a contradictory form in which this necessity shows
itself. However often a lie may destroy a given relationship, as
long as the relationship existed, the lie was an integral element
of it. The ethically negative value of the lie must not blind us
to its sociologically quite positive significance for the formation
of certain concrete relations. In regard to the elementary socio-
logical fact at issue here — the restriction of the knowledge of the
one about the other — it must be remembered that the lie is only
one among all possible available means. It is the positive and,
as it were, aggressive technique, whose purpose is more often at-
tained by mere secrecy and concealment. These more general
and more negative forms will be discussed in the following pages.

Chapter 2

Types of Social Relationships
by Degrees of Reciprocal
Knowledge of Their
Participants

BEFORE COMING TO THE

secret in the sense of a consciously desired concealment, one
must note the different degrees to which various relationships
leave the reciprocal knowledge of the total personalities of their
members outside their province.

§ 1 . Interest Groups

Among the various groups still involving direct interaction,
the most important is the association based on some particular
interest [Zweckverband'\y more especially that which involves
completely objective member contributions, determined by
mere membership. The purest form here is monetary contribu-
tion. In this case, interaction, solidarity, and the pursuit of com-
mon purposes do not depend on everybody’s psychological
knowledge of everybody else. As a group member, the individual
is only the executor of a certain function. Questions concerning
those individual motives which determine this performance,
or the sort of total personality in which his conduct is imbedded,
are completely irrelevant. The association based on some par-
ticular interest is the discreet sociological form par excellence.
Its members are psychologically anonymous. In order to form
the association, all they have to know of one another is precisely

317

318 Types of Social Relationships

this fact — that they form it. The increasing objectification of
our culture, whose phenomena consist more and more of im-
personal elements and less and less absorb the subjective totality
of the individual (most simply shown by the contrast between
handicraft and factory work), also involves sociological struc-
tures. Therefore, groups into which earlier man entered in his
totality and individuality and which, for this reason, required
reciprocal knowledge far beyond the immediate, objective con-
tent of the relationship — these groups are now based exclusively
on this objective content, which is neatly factored out of the
whole relation.

§ 2. Confidence under More and Less Complex Conditions

This development also gives a peculiar evolution to an ante-
cedent or subsequent form of knowledge about a human being,
namely, confidence in him. Confidence, evidently, is one of the
most important synthetic forces within society. As a hypothesis
regarding future behavior, a hypothesis certain enough to serve
as a basis for practical conduct, confidence is intermediate be-
tween knowledge and ignorance about a man. The person who
knows completely need not trust; while the person who knows
nothing can, on no rational grounds, afford even confidence.^
Epochs, fields of interest, and individuals differ, characteristic-

1 There is, to be sure, also another type of confidence. But since it stands outside
the categories of knowledge and ignorance, it touches the present discussion only
indirectly. This type is called the faith of one man in another. It belongs in the
category of religious faith. Just as nobody has ever believed in God on the basis
of any “proof of the existence of God,” since, on the contrary, these proofs are
post-festum justifications or intellectual mirrors of a completely immediate, affec-
tive attitude, so one “believes” in a particular man without justifying this faith
by proofs of his worthiness, and often even in spite of proofs to the contrary. This
confidence, this inner unreservedness in regard to another individual, is mediated
neither by experiences nor by hypotheses; it is a primary, fundamental attitude
toward the other. In an entirely pure form, detached from any empirical considera-
tion, this state of faith probably exists only within religion. In regard to men, it
always, presumably, needs some stimulation or confirmation by the knowledge or
expectation mentioned above. On the other hand, even in the social forms of con-
fidence, no matter how exactly and intellectually grounded they may appear to be,
there may yet be some additional affective, even mystical, “faith” of man in man.
Perhaps what has been characterized here is a fundamental category of human
conduct, which goes back to the metaphysical sense of our relationships and which
is realized in a merely empirical, accidental, fragmentary manner by the conscious
and particular reasons for confidence.

Confidence under Complex Conditions 319

ally, by the measures of knowledge and ignorance which must
mix in order that the single, practical decision based on confi-
dence arise.

The objectification of culture has decisively differentiated
the quanta of knowledge and ignorance necessary for confidence.
The modern merchant who enters business with another; the
scholar who together with another embarks upon an investiga-
tion; the leader of a political party who makes an agreement
with the leader of another party concerning matters of election
or the treatment of pending bills; all these know (if we overlook
exceptions and imperfections) only exactly that and no more
about their partner which they have to know for the sake of the
relationship they wish to enter. The traditions and institutions,
the power of public opinion and the definition of the position
which inescapably stamps the individual, have become so solid
and reliable that one has to know only certain external facts
about the other person in order to have the confidence required
for the common action. The question is no longer some founda-
tion of personal qualities on which (at least in principle) a
modification of behavior within the relation might be based:
motivation and regulation of this behavior have become so
objectified that confidence no longer needs any properly per-
sonal knowledge. Under more primitive, less differentiated con-
ditions, the individual knows much more about his partner in
regard to personal matters, and much less in regard to his purely
objective competence. The two belong together: in order to
produce the necessary confidence despite a lack of knowledge
in objective matters, a much higher degree of knowledge in
personal matters is necessary.

The purely general knowledge, which extends only to the
objective elements of the person and leaves its secret — the
personal-individual area — untouched, must be supplemented
considerably by the knowledge of this very area, whenever the
interest group is of essential significance to the total existence
of its members. The merchant who sells grain or oil needs to
know only whether his correspondent is good for the price.
But if he takes him as his associate, he must not only know his
financial standing and certain of his very general qualities, but
he must have thorough insight into him as a personality; he must

320 Types of Social Relationships

know whether he is decent, compatible, and whether he has a
daring or hesitant temperament. Upon such reciprocal knowl-
edge rest not only the beginning of the relationship, but also
its whole development, the daily common actions, and the divi-
sion of functions between the partners. Today the secret of the
personality is sociologically more limited. In view of the large
extent to which the interest in the common pursuit is borne by
personal qualities, the personal element can no longer be so
autonomous.

§ 3 . Acquaintance^^

Aside from interest groups but aside, equally, from relation-
ships rooted in the total personality, there is the sociologically
highly peculiar relation which, in our times, among educated
strata, is designated simply as ‘'acquaintance.'’ Mutual “ac-
quaintance” by no means is knowledge of one another; it in-
volves no actual insight into the individual nature of the per-
sonality. It only means that one has taken notice of the other’s
existence, as it were. It is characteristic that the idea of acquaint-
ance is suggested by the mere mentioning of one’s name, by
“introducing oneself”: “acquaintance” depends upon the
knowledge of the that of the personality, not of its what. After
all, by saying that one is acquainted, even well acquainted, with
a particular person, one characterizes quite clearly the lack of
really intimate relations. Under the rubric of acquaintance, one
knows of the other only what he is toward the outside, either
in the purely social-representative s^ense, or in the sense of that
which he shows us. The degree of knowledge covered by “being
well acquainted with one another,” refers not to the other per se;
not to what is essential in him, intrinsically, but only to what is
significant for that aspect of him which is turned toward others
and the world.

§ 4 . Discretion

Acquaintance in this social sense is, therefore, the proper
seat of “discretion.” For, discretion consists by no means only
in the respect for the secret of the other, for his specific will to

Discretion 321

conceal this or that from us, but in staying away from the
knowledge of all that the other does not expressly reveal to us.
It does not refer to anything particular which we are not per-
mitted to know, but to a quite general reserve in regard to the
total personality. Discretion is a special form of the typical
contrast between the imperatives, “what is not prohibited is
allowed,” and “what is not allowed is prohibited.” Relations
among men are thus distinguished according to the question
of mutual knowledge — of either “what is not concealed may
be known,” or “what is not revealed must not be known.”

To act upon the second of these decisions corresponds to the
feeling (which also operates elsewhere) that an ideal sphere lies
around every human being. Although differing in size in various
directions and differing according to the person with whom one
entertains relations, this sphere cannot be penetrated, unless
the personality value of the individual is thereby destroyed.
A sphere of this sort is placed around man by his “honor.”
Language very poignantly designates an insult to one’s honor as
“coming too close”: the radius of this sphere marks, as it were,
the distance whose trespassing by another person insults one’s
honor.

Another -sphere of the same form corresponds to what is
called the “significance” of a personality. In regard to the
“significant” [“great”] man, there is an inner compulsion which
tells one to keep at a distance and which does not disappear
even in intimate relations with him. The only type for whom
such distance does not exist is the individual who has no organ
for perceiving significance. For this reason, the “valet” knows
no such sphere of distance; for him there is no “hero”; but
this is due, not to the hero, but to the valet. For the same reason,
all importunity is associated with a striking lack of feeling for
differences in the significance of men. The individual who fails
to keep his distance from a great person does not esteem him
highly, much less too highly (as might superficially appear to be
the case) ; but, on the contrary, his importune behavior reveals
lack of proper respect. The painter often emphasizes the sig-
nificance of a figure in a picture that contains many figures by
arranging the others in a considerable distance from it. In an
analogous fashion, the sociological simile of significance is the

322 Types of Social Relationships

distance which keeps the individual outside a certain sphere
that is occupied by the power, will, and greatness of a person.

The same sort of circle which surrounds man — although it
is value-accentuated in a very different sense — is filled out by
his affairs and by his characteristics. To penetrate this circle by
taking notice, constitutes a violation of his personality. Just as
material property is, so to speak, an extension of the ego, 2 and
any interference with our property is, for this reason, felt to be
a violation of the person, there also is an intellectual private-
property, whose violation effects a lesion of the ego in its very
center. Discretion is nothing but the feeling that there exists
a right in regard to the sphere of the immediate life contents.
Discretion, of course, differs in its extension with different per-
sonalities, just as the positions of honor and of property have
different radii with respect to ‘"close” individuals, and to
strangers and indifferent persons. In the case of the above-
mentioned, more properly “social” relations, which are most
conveniently designated as “acquaintances,” the point to which
discretion extends is, above all, a very typical boundary: beyond
it, perhaps there are not even any jealously guarded secrets; but
conventionally and discreetly, the other individual, neverthe-
less, does not trespass it by questions or other invasions.

The question where this boundary lies cannot be answered
in terms of a simple principle; it leads into the finest ramifica-
tions of societal formation. For, in an absolute sense, the right
to intellectual private-property can be affirmed as little as can
the right to material property. We know that, in higher civiliza-
tions, material private-property in its essential three dimensions
— ^acquisition, insurance, increase — is never based on the indi-
vidual’s own forces alone. It always requires the conditions and
forces of the social milieu. From the beginning, therefore, it is
limited by the right of the whole, whether through taxation or
through certain checks on acquisition. But this right is grounded
more deeply than just in the principle of service and counter-
service between society and individual: it is grounded in the
much more elementary principle, that the part must sustain as
great a restriction upon its autonomous existence and posses-

2 Property is that which obeys the will of the owner, as, for instance (with a
difference of degree only), our body which is our first “property.’*

Discretion S23

siveness as the maintenance and the purposes o£ the whole
require.

This also applies to the inner sphere of man. In the interest
of interaction and social cohesion, the individual must know
certain things about the other person. Nor does the other have
the right to oppose this knowledge from a moral standpoint, by
demanding the discretion of the first: he cannot claim the en-
tirely undisturbed possession of his own being and conscious-
ness, since this discretion might harm the interests of his society.
The businessman who contracts long-range obligations with
another; the master who employs a servant (but also the servant
before entering the service); the superior who advances a sub-
ordinate; the housewife who accepts a new member into her
social circle: all these must have the right to learn or infer those
aspects of the other’s past and present, temperament, and moral
quality on the basis of which they can act rationally in regard
to him, or reject him. These are very crude instances of the case
where the duty of discretion — to renounce the knowledge of all
that the other does not voluntarily show us — recedes before
practical requirements. But even in subtler and less unambig-
uous forms, in fragmentary beginnings and unexpressed notions,
all of human. intercourse rests on the fact that everybody knows
somewhat more about the other than the other voluntarily re-
veals to him; and those things he knows are frequently matters
whose knowledge the other person (were he aware of it) would
find undesirable.

All this may be considered indiscretion in the individual
sense: in the social sense, it is a condition necessary for the
concrete density and vitality of interaction. Nevertheless, it is
extremely difficult to trace the legal limit of this trespass into
intellectual private-property. In general, man arrogates to him-
self the right to know all he can find out through mere observa-
tion and reflection, without applying externally illegitimate
means. As a matter of fact, however, indiscretion practiced in
this fashion can be just as violent and morally inadmissible as
listening behind closed doors and leering at a stranger’s letters.
To the man with the psychologically fine ear, people innumer-
able times betray their most secret thoughts and qualities, not
only although, but often because, they anxiously try to guard

324 Types of Social Relationships

them. The avid, spying grasp of every inconsiderate word, the
boring reflection on what this or that tone of voice might mean,
how such and such utterances might be combined, what blush-
ing on mentioning a certain name might betray — none of this
transcends the limits of external discretion; it is entirely the
work of one's own intellect and, for this reason, one's appar-
ently indisputable right. And all the more so, since such an
abuse of psychological superiority often occurs quite involun-
tarily: often we simply cannot check our interpretation of the
other, our construction of his inner nature. No matter how
much every decent person tells himself that he must not muse
on what the other hides, that he must not exploit the slips and
helplessnesses of the other; knowledge, nevertheless, occurs often
so automatically, and its result confronts us with such striking
suddenness, that mere good will has no power over it. Where
the doubtlessly impermissible can yet be so inevitable, the
boundary between what is allowed and what is not, is all the
more blurred. How far discretion must refrain from touching
even intellectually ‘'all that is his"; how far, on the other hand,
the interests of interaction and the interdependence of the mem-
bers of society limit this duty — this is a question for whose
answer neither moral tact nor knowledge of objective condi-
tions and their requirements alone is sufficient, since both are
needed. The subtlety and complexity of this question relegate
it to the individual decision which cannot be prejudged by any
general norm — to a much higher degree than does the question
of private property in the material sense.

§ 5 . Friendship and Love

In this pre-form or complementation of the secret, the point
is not the behavior of the individual who keeps a secret, but the
behavior of another individual: within the mixture of recip-
rocal knowledge or ignorance, the accent is more on the degree
of knowledge than of ignorance. We now come to a totally dif-
ferent configuration. It is found in those relationships which,
in contrast to the ones discussed, do not center around clearly
circumscribed interests that must be fixed objectively, if only
because of their “superficiality." Instead, they are built, at least

Friendship and Love S25

in their idea, upon the person in its totality. The principal types
here are friendship and marriage.

To the extent that the ideal of friendship was received from
antiquity and (peculiarly enough) was developed in a romantic
spirit, it aims at an absolute psychological intimacy, and is ac-
companied by the notion that even material property should be
common to friends. This entering of the whole undivided ego
into the relationship may be more plausible in friendship than
in love for the reason that friendship lacks the specific concen-
tration upon one element which love derives from its sensuous-
ness. To be sure, by virtue of the fact that one among the total
range of possible reasons for a relation takes the lead, these
reasons attain a certain organization, as a group does through
leadership. A particularly strong relational factor often blazes
the trail on which the rest follow it, when they would otherwise
remain latent; and undoubtedly, for most people, sexual love
opens the doors of the total personality more widely than does
anything else. For not a few, in fact, love is the only form in
which they can give their ego in its totality, just as to the artist
the form of his art offers the only possibility for revealing his
whole inner life. Probably, this observation can be made espe-
cially often of women (although the very differently understood
‘‘Christian love** is also designed to achieve the same result).
Not only because they love do women unreservedly offer the
total remainder of their being and having; but all of this, so to
speak, is chemically dissolved in love, and overflows to the other
being exclusively and entirely in the color, form, and tempera-
ment of love. Yet, where the feeling of love is not sufficiently
expansive, and the remaining psychological contents of the rela-
tionship are not sufficiently malleable, the preponderance of the
erotic bond may suppress, as I have already suggested, the other
contacts (practical-moral, intellectual), as well as the opening-up
of those reservoirs of the personality that lie outside the erotic
sphere.

Friendship lacks this vehemence, but also the frequent un-
evenness, of this abandon. It may be, therefore, more apt than
love to connect a whole person with another person in its en-
tirety; it may melt reserves more easily than love does — if not
as stormily, yet on a larger scale and in a more enduring

326 Types of Social Relationships

sequence. Yet such complete intimacy becomes probably more
and more difficult as differentiation among men increases.
Modem man, possibly, has too much to hide to sustain a friend-
ship in the ancient sense. Besides, except for their earliest years,
personalities are perhaps too uniquely individualized to allow
full reciprocity of understanding and receptivity, which always,
after all, requires much creative imagination and much divina-
tion which is oriented only toward the other. It would seem that,
for all these reasons, the modem way of feeling tends more
heavily toward differentiated friendships, which cover only one
side of the personality, without playing into other aspects of it.

Thus a very special type of friendship emerges, which is of
the greatest significance for our problem (the degrees of invasion
and reserve within the friendship relation). These differentiated
friendships which connect us with one individual in terms of
affection, with another, in terms of common intellectual aspects,
with a third, in terms of religious impulses, and with a fourth,
in terms of common experiences — all these friendships present
a very peculiar synthesis in regard to the question of discretion,
of reciprocal revelation and concealment. They require that
the friends do not look into those mutual spheres of interest
and feeling which, after all, are not included in the relation and
which, if touched upon, would make them feel painfully the
limits of their mutual understanding. But the relation which is
thus restricted and surrounded by discretions, may yet stem
from the center of the total personality. It may yet be reached
by the sap of the ultimate roots of the personality, even though
it feeds only part of the person’s periphery. In its idea, it involves
the same affective depth and the same readiness for sacrifice,
which less differentiated epochs and persons connect only with
a common total sphere of life, for which reservations and dis-
cretions constitute no problem.

§ 6 . Marriage

The measures of self-revelation and self-restraint, with their
complements of trespass and discretion, are much more difficult
to determine in the case of marriage. Their ratio here belongs
in a very general problem area of extreme importance to the

Marriage 327

scxriology of intimate relations. This problem area centers
around the question whether the maximum of common values
can be attained under the condition that the personalities re-
ciprocally relinquish their autonomies altogether, or under the
condition of reserve: the question whether, perhaps, they do
not belong more to one another qualitatively if, quantitatively,
they do so less. This question can be answered, of course, only
along with the other question as to how, within the total com-
municability of man, one can draw the line where restraint and
respect of the other begin. The advantage of modern marriage —
which, certainly, can answer both questions only from case to
case — is that this line is not fixed from the beginning, as it is in
other and earlier civilizations. In earlier cultures particularly,
marriage is not an erotic but, in principle, only a social and
economic institution. The satisfaction of the desire for love is
only accidentally connected with it; it is contracted (with excep-
tions, of course), not only on the basis of individual attraction,
but on the ground of family connections, working conditions,
and descendants. In this respect, the Greeks achieved a particu-
larly clear differentiation — according to Demosthenes: “We
have hetaerae for pleasure; concubines for our daily needs; and
wives to give .us legitimate children and take care of the interior
of the house.’* In such a mechanical relationship, the psychic
center is obviously put out of function. Nevertheless (incident-
ally), this kind of marriage is constantly illustrated, though with
certain modifications, by history and by the observation of
actual contemporary marriages. There probably exists in it
neither the need for any intimate, reciprocal self-revelation,
nor the possibility of it. On the other hand, there is probably
an absence of certain reserves of delicacy and chastity which, in
spite of their seemingly negative character, are yet the flower
of a fully internalized and personal, intimate relation.

The same tendency to exclude, a priori and by super-
individual decree, certain life-contents from the common fea-
tures of marriage lies in the variety of marriage forms which
may coexist among the same people. Prior to entering marriage,
the prospective spouses must choose among these forms, which
variously distinguish economic, religious, and domestic-legal
interests in their bearing upon matrimony. We find this among

328 Types of Social Relationships

many nature peoples, as well as among the Hindus and Romans.
Nobody will deny, of course, that even in modern life, marriage
is probably contracted overwhelmingly from conventional or
material motives. Yet no matter how often it is actualized, the
sociological idea of modern marriage is the commonness of all
life-contents, insofar as they determine the value and fate of
the personality, immediately or through their effects. Nor is the
nature of this ideal requirement without results: often enough
it allows, or even stimulates, an initially quite imperfect union
to develop into an ever more comprehensive one. But, whereas
the very interminability of this process is the instrument of the
happiness and inner vitality of the relationship, its reversal
usually entails grave disappointments — namely, when abso-
lute unity is anticipated from the beginning, when neither de-
mand nor revelation knows restraint, not even the restraint
which, for all finer and deeper natures, remains locked in the
obscurity of the soul even where it seems to pour itself out before
the other entirely.

During the first stages of the relationship there is a great
temptation, both in marriage and in marriage-like free love,
to let oneself be completely absorbed by the other, to send the
last reserves of the soul after those of the body, to lose oneself to
the other without reservation. Yet, in most cases, this abandon
probably threatens the future of the relationship seriously. Only
those individuals can give themselves wholly without danger
who cannot wholly give themselves, because their wealth con-
sists in a continuous development in which every abandon is at
once followed by new treasures. Such individuals have an inex-
haustible reservoir of latent psychological possessions, and hence
can no more reveal and give them away at one stroke than a
tree can give away next year's fruits with those of the season.
But other individuals are different. With every flight of feeling,
with every unconditional abandonment, with every revelation
of their inner life, they make inroads (as it were) into their
capital, because they lack the mainspring of ever renewed
psychic affluence which can neither be exhaustively revealed
nor be separated from the ego. In these cases, the spouses have
a good chance of coming to face one another with empty hands;
and the Dionysian bliss of giving may leave behind it an im-

Marriage 329

poverishment which, unjustly, but no less bitterly for that,
belies in restrospect even past abandons and their happiness.

We are, after all, made in such a way that we need not only
a certain proportion of truth and error as the basis of our lives
(as was pointed out earlier), but also a certain proportion of
distinctness and indistinctness in the image of our life-elements.
The other individual must give us not only gifts we may accept,
but the possibility of our giving him — hopes, idealizations,
hidden beauties, attractions of which not even he is conscious.
But the place where we deposit all this, which we produce, but
produce for him^ is the indistinct horizon of his personality, the
interstitial realm, in which faith replaces knowledge. But it
must be strongly emphasized that this is, by no means, only a
matter of illusions and optimistic or amorous self-deceptions,
but that portions even of the persons closest to us must be offered
us in the form of indistinctness and unclarity, in order for their
attractiveness to keep on the same high level.

It is in this way that the majority of people replace the attrac-
tion values, which the minority possess in the inexhaustibility
of their inner life and growth. The mere fact of absolute knowl-
edge, of a psychological having-exhausted, sobers us up, even
without prioi? drunkenness; it paralyzes the vitality of relations
and lets their continuation really appear pointless. This is the
danger of complete and (in more than an external sense) shame-
less abandon, to which the unlimited possibilities of intimate
relations tempt us. These possibilities, in fact, are easily felt
as a kind of duty — particularly where there exists no absolute
certainty of one’s own feeling; and the fear of not giving the
other enough leads to giving him too much. It is highly prob-
able that many marriages founder on this lack of reciprocal
discretion — discretion both in taking and in giving. They lapse
into a trivial habituation without charm, into a matter-of-
factness which has no longer any room for surprises. The fertile
depth of relations suspects and honors something even more
ultimate behind every ultimateness revealed; it daily challenges
us to reconquer even secure possessions. But this depth is only
the reward for that tenderness and self-discipline which, even in
the most intimate relation that comprises the total individual,
respects his inner private property, and allows the right to
Question to be limited bv the riffht to secrecv.

Chapter 3

Secrecy

THE SOCIOLOGICAL CHAR-

acteristic of all these combinations is that the secret of a given
individual is acknowledged by another; that what is inten-
tionally or unintentionally hidden is intentionally or uninten-
tionally respected. The intention of hiding, however, takes on
a much greater intensity when it clashes with the intention of
revealing. In this situation emerges that purposive hiding and
masking, that aggressive defensive, so to speak, against the third
person, which alone is usually designated as secret.

§ 1 . The Role of the Secret in Social Life

The secret in this sense, the hiding of realities by negative
or positive means, is one of man’s greatest achievements. In
comparison with the childish stage in which every conception
is expressed at once, and every undertaking is accessible to the
eyes of all, the secret produces an immense enlargement of life:
numerous contents of life cannot even emerge in the presence of
full publicity. The secret offers, so to speak, the possibility of a
second world alongside the manifest world; and the latter is
decisively influenced by the former.

Whether there is secrecy between two individuals or groups,
and if so how much, is a question that characterizes every rela-
tion between them. For even where one of the two does not
notice the existence of a secret, the behavior of the concealer, and
hence the whole relationship, is certainly modified by it.^ The

3 In some cases, this hiding has a sociological consequence of a peculiar ethical
paradoxicalness. For however destructive it often is for a relation between two
if one of them has committed a fault against the other of which both are conscious,
it can, on the contrary, be very useful for the relation if the guilty one alone knows
of the fault. For, this causes in him a considerateness, a delicacy, a secret wish to
make up for it, a yieldingness and selflessness, none of which would ever occur
to him had he a completely untroubled conscience.

330

The Role of the Secret in Social Life 331

historical development of society is in many respects charac-
terized by the fact that what at an earlier time was manifest,
enters the protection of secrecy; and that, conversely, what once
was secret, no longer needs such protection but reveals itself.
This is comparable to that other evolution of the mind by which
what originally was done consciously, sinks to the level of con-
sciously mechanical routine, and, on the other hand, what at
an earlier stage was unconscious and instinctive, rises to the
clarity of consciousness. How this is distributed among the
various formations of private and public life; how this evolution
leads to ever more purposeful conditions inasmuch as, at the
beginning, the range of secrecy is often extended much too far,
in clumsy and undifferentiated fashion, and, on the other hand,
the utility of secrecy is recognized only late with respect to many
other items; how the quantum of secrecy is modified in its conse-
quences by the importance or irrelevance of its contents — all
this, even as mere question, illuminates the significance of the
secret for the structure of human interaction.

This significance must not be overlooked in view of the fact
that the secret is often ethically negative; for, the secret is a
general sociological form which stands in neutrality above the
value functions of its contents. It may absorb the highest values
— as, for instance, in the case of the noble individual whose
subtle shame makes him conceal his best in order not to have
it remunerated by eulogy and other rewards; for, otherwise, he
would possess the remuneration, as it were, but no longer the
value itself. On the other hand, although the secret has no
immediate connection with evil, evil has an immediate connec-
tion with secrecy: the immoral hides itself for obvious reasons
even where its content meets with no social stigma as, for in-
stance, in the case of certain sexual delinquencies. The intrin-
sically isolating effect of immorality as such, irrespective of all
direct social repulsion, is real and important beyond the many
alleged entanglements of an ethical and social kind. Among
other things, the secret is also the sociological expression of
moral badness, although the facts contradict the classical phrase
that nobody is bad enough to want, in addition, to appear bad.
For often enough, spite and cynicism do not even let it come
to a concealment of badness; in fact, they may exploit badness

332 Secrecy

in order to enhance the personality in the eyes of others — to
the point where an individual sometimes brags about im-
moralities he has not even committed.

§ 2. The Fdscination of Secrecy

The employment of secrecy as a sociological technique, as
a form of action without which certain purposes — since we live
in a social environment — can simply not be attained, is under-
standable immediately. Not quite so evident are the attractions
and values of the secret beyond its significance as a mere means —
the peculiar attraction of formally secretive behavior irrespec-
tive of its momentary content. In the first place, the strongly
emphasized exclusion of all outsiders makes for a correspond-
ingly strong feeling of possession. For many individuals, prop-
erty does not fully gain its significance with mere ownership,
but only with the consciousness that others must do without
it. The basis for this, evidently, is the impressionability of our
feelings through differences. Moreover, since the others are ex-
cluded from the possession — particularly when it is very valu-
able — the converse suggests itself psychologically, namely, that
what is denied to many must have special value.

Inner property of the most heterogeneous kinds, thus, attains
a characteristic value accent through the form of secrecy, in
which the contentual significance of what is concealed recedes,
often enough, before the simple fact that others know nothing
about it. Among children, pride and bragging are often based
on a child’s being able to say to the other: “I know something
that you don’t know” — and to such a degree, that this sentence
is uttered as a formal means of boasting and of subordinating
the others, even where it is made up and actually refers to no
secret. This jealousy of the knowledge about facts hidden to
others, is shown in all contexts, from the smallest to the largest.
British parliamentary discussions were secret for a long time;
and, as late as under George III, press communications about
them were prosecuted as criminal offenses — explicitly, as viola-
tions of parliamentary privileges. The secret gives one a position
of exception; it operates as a purely socially determined attrac-
tion. It is basically independent of the content it guards but, of

The Fascination of Betrayal SSS

course, is increasingly effective in the measure in which the
exclusive possession is vast and significant.

For this, a converse notion, analogous to the one mentioned
above, is also responsible in part. For the average man, all
superior persons and all superior achievements have something
mysterious. All human being and doing, to be sure, flows from
enigmatic forces. Yet among individuals of the same quality and
value level, this does not yet make one a problem in the eyes of
the other, particularly because the equality produces a certain
direct understanding, not mediated by the intellect. Essential in-
equality, on the contrary, produces no such understanding, and
any particular difference makes the general enigmatic character
come to the fore at once. (This is similar to one’s always living in
the same landscape and thus never suspecting the problem of in-
fluence by scenery — a problem which impresses us, however, as
soon as we change our surroundings, and a different life-feeling
calls our attention to the causative role of the scenic milieu
generally.) From secrecy, which shades all that is profound and
significant, glows the typical error according to which every-
thing mysterious is something important and essential. Before
the unknown, man’s natural impulse to idealize and his natural
fearfulness cooperate toward the same goal: to intensify the
unknown through imagination, and to pay attention to it with
an emphasis that is not usually accorded to patent reality.

§ 3. The Fascination of Betrayal

Peculiarly enough, these attractions of secrecy are related
to those of its logical opposite, betrayal — which, evidently, are
no less sociological. The secret contains a tension that is dis-
solved in the moment of its revelation. This moment constitutes
the acme in the development of the secret; all of its charms are
once more gathered in it and brought to a climax — just as the
moment of dissipation lets one enjoy with extreme intensity the
value of the object: the feeling of power which accompanies
the possession of money becomes concentrated for the dissipator,
most completely and sensuously, in the very instant in which he
lets this power out of his hands. The secret, too, is full of the con-
sciousness that it can be betrayed; that one holds the power of

334 Secrecy

surprises, turns of fate, joy, destruction — if only, perhaps, of
self-destruction. For this reason, the secret is surrounded by the
possibility and temptation of betrayal; and the external danger
of being discovered is interwoven with the internal danger,
which is like the fascination of an abyss, of giving oneself away.
The secret puts a barrier between men but, at the same time, it
creates the tempting challenge to break through it, by gossip or
confession — and this challenge accompanies its psychology like
a constant overtone. The sociological significance of the secret,
therefore, has its practical extent, its mode of realization, only
in the individual’s capacity or inclination to keep it to himself,
in his resistance or weakness in the face of tempting betrayal.
Out of the counterplay of these two interests, in concealing and
revealing, spring nuances and fates of human interaction that
permeate it in its entirety. In the light of our earlier stipulation,
every human relation is characterized, among other things, by
the amount of secrecy that is in and around it. In this respect,
therefore, the further development of every relation is deter-
mined by the ratio of persevering and yielding energies which
are contained in the relation. The former rest on the practical
interest in secrecy and its formal attraction. The latter are based
on the impossibility of bearing the tension entailed by keeping
a secret any longer, and on a feeling of superiority. Although
this superiority lies in a latent form, so to speak, in secrecy itself,
for our feelings it is fully actualized only at the moment of revela-
tion or often, also, in the lust of confession, which may contain
this feeling of power in the negative and perverted form of self-
humiliation and contrition.

§ 4 . Secrecy and Individualization

All these elements which determine the sociological role of
the secret are of an individual nature; but the measure in which
the dispositions and complications of personalities form secrets
depends, at the same time, on the social structure in which their
lives are placed. The decisive point in this respect is that the
secret is a first-rate element of individualization. It is this in a
typical dual role: social conditions of strong personal differen-
tiation permit and require secrecy in a high degree; and, con-

Secrecy and Individualization 335

versely, the secret embodies and intensifies such differentiation.
In a small and narrow circle, the formation and preservation of
secrets is made difficult even on technical grounds: everybody
is too close to everybody else and his circumstances, and fre-
quency and intimacy of contact involve too many temptations of
revelation. But further, the secret is not even particularly
needed, because this type of social formation usually levels its
members, and the peculiarities of existence, activities, and pos-
sessions whose conservation requires the form of secrecy, militate
against this social form and its leveling.

With the enlargement of the group, evidently, all this changes
into its opposite. Here, as elsewhere, the specific traits of the
large group are most clearly revealed by the conditions of a
money economy. Ever since traffic in economic values has been
carried on by means of money alone, an otherwise unattainable
secrecy has become possible. Three characteristics of the mone-
tary form of value are relevant here: its compressibility, which
permits one to make somebody rich by slipping a check into his
hand without anybody's noticing it; its abstractness and quality-
lessness, through which transactions, acquisitions, and changes
in ownership can be rendered hidden and unrecognizable in a
way impossible where values are owned only in the form of
extensive, unambiguously tangible objects; and finally, its effect-
at-a-distance, which allows its investment in very remote and
ever-changing values, and thus its complete withdrawal from
the eyes of the immediate environment. These possibilities of
dissimulation develop in the measure in which the money
economy expands, and they are bound to show their dangers
in economic action involving foreign moneys. They have led
to a protective measure, namely, the public character of financial
manipulations by joint-stock companies and governments.

This suggests a somewhat more exact phrasing of the evolu-
tionary formula touched upon above. According to it, it will be
recalled, the secret is a form which constantly receives and re-
leases contents: what originally was manifest becomes secret, and
what once was hidden later sheds its concealment. One could,
therefore, entertain the paradoxical idea that under otherwise
identical circumstances, human collective life requires a certain
measure of secrecy which merely changes its topics: while leaving

336 Secrecy

one of them, social life seizes upon another, and in all this alter-
nation it preserves an unchanged quantity of secrecy.

But one can find a somewhat more precisely determined con-
tent for this general scheme. It seems as if, with growing cultural
expediency, general affairs became ever more public, and indi-
vidual affairs ever more secret. In less developed stages, as has
already been noted, the individual and his conditions cannot, to
the same extent, protect themselves against being looked into and
meddled with as under the modern style of life, which has pro-
duced an entirely new measure of reserve and discretion, espe-
cially in large cities. In earlier times, functionaries of the public
interests were customarily clothed with mystical authority, while,
under larger and more mature conditions, they attain, through
the extension of their sphere of domination, through the objec-
tivity of their technique, and through their distance from every
individual, a certainty and dignity by means of which they can
permit their activities to be public. The former secrecy of public
affairs, however, showed its inner inconsistency by at once creat-
ing the countermovements of betrayal, on the one hand, and of
espionage, on the other. Even as late as in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, governments kept anxiously silent about
the amounts of state debts, the tax situation, and the size of the
army. Ambassadors, therefore, often knew no better than to spy,
to intercept letters, and to make people who “knew something”
talk, domestics not excluded.^ In the nineteenth century, how-
ever, publicity invaded the affairs of state to such an extent that,
by now, governments officially publish facts without whose
secrecy, prior to the nineteenth century, no regime seemed even
possible. Politics, administration, and jurisdiction thus have
lost their secrecy and inaccessibility in the same measure in which
the individual has gained the possibility of ever more complete
withdrawal, and in the same measure in which modern life has

4 This countermovement also occurs in the opposite direction. It has been said
about English court history that the real court cabal, the secret whisperings, the
organizations of intrigue, did not occur under despotism, but only once the king
had constitutional counselors, that is, when the government was, to this extent, an
openly revealed system. Only then, the king began — and this is supposed to have
been noticeable particularly since Edward II — to form, against these co-rulers who
somehow were foisted upon him, an inofficial quasi -subterranean circle of advisers,
which in itself, as well as through the efforts to enter it, created a chain of conceal-
ments and conspiracies.

Secrecy and Individualization 337

developed, in the midst of metropolitan crowdedness, a tech-
nique for making and keeping private matters secret, such as
earlier could be attained only by means of spatial isolation.

The answer to the question of how far this development
may be considered expedient depends on social value axioms.
Every democracy holds publicity to be an intrinsically desirable
situation, on the fundamental premise that everybody should
know the events and circumstances that concern him, since this
is the condition without which he cannot contribute to decisions
about them; and every shared knowledge itself contains the psy-
chological challenge to shared action. It is a moot question
whether this conclusion is quite valid. If, above all individualistic
interests, there has grown an objective governing structure
which embodies certain aspects of these interests, the formal
autonomy of this structure may very well entitle it to function
secretly, without thereby belying its “publicity*' in the sense
of a material consideration of the interests of all. Thus, there is
no logical connection which would entail the greater value of
publicity. On the other hand, the general scheme of cultural
differentiation is again shown here: what is public becomes ever
more public, and what is private becomes ever more private. And
this historical* development is the expression of a deeper, objec-
tive significance: what is essentially public and what, in its con-
tent, concerns all, also becomes ever more public externally, in
its sociological form; and what, in its inner meaning, is autono-
mous — the centripetal affairs of the individual — gains an ever
more private character even in its sociological position, an ever
more distinct possibility of remaining secret.

I pointed out earlier that the secret also operates as an adorn-
ing possession and value of the personality. This fact involves
the contradiction that what recedes before the consciousness of
the others and is hidden from them, is to be emphasized in their
consciousness; that one should appear as a particularly note-
worthy person precisely through what one conceals. But this
contradiction proves, not only that the need for sociological at-
tention may indeed resort to intrinsically contradictory means,
but also that those against whom the means are actually directed
in the given case, satisfy this need by bearing the cost of the
superiority. They do so with a mixture of readiness and dislike;

338 Secrecy

but, in practice, they nevertheless supply the desired recogni-
tion. It may thus be appropriate to show that, although appar-
ently the sociological counter-pole of secrecy, adornment has,
in fact, a societal significance with a structure analogous to that
of secrecy itself. It is the nature and function of adornment to
lead the eyes of others upon the adorned. Although, in this
sense, it is the antagonist of secrecy, not even the secret (it will
be remembered) is without the function of personal emphasis.
And this, adornment, too, exercises, by mixing superiority to
others with dependence upon them, and their good will with
their envy. It does so in a manner which, as a sociological form
of interaction, requires its special investigation.

§ 5 . Adornment ®

Man's desire to please his social environment contains two
contradictory tendencies, in whose play and counterplay in
general, the relations among individuals take their course. On
the one hand, it contains kindness, a desire of the individual to
give the other joy; but on the other hand, there is the wish for
this joy and these “favors" to flow back to him, in the form of
recognition and esteem, so that they be attributed to his person-
ality as values. Indeed, this second need is so intensified that
it militates against the altruism of wishing to please: by means
of this pleasing, the individual desires to distinguish himself
before others, and to be the object of an attention that others do
not receive. This may even lead him to the point of wanting to
be envied. Pleasing may thus become a means of the will to
power: some individuals exhibit the strange contradiction that
they need those above whom they elevate themselves by life
and deed, for they build their own self-feeling upon the sub-
ordinates' realization that they are subordinate.

The meaning of adornment finds expression in peculiar
elaborations of these motives, in which the external and internal
aspects of their forms are interwoven. This meaning is to single
the personality out, to emphasize it as outstanding in some sense

6 In the original, this section, printed in smaller type, is called "'Exkurs iiber
den Schmuck** (Note on Adornment). — ^According to the context, **Schmuch** is
translated as “adornment,” “jewels,” or “jewelry.” — Tr.

Adornment 339

— but not by means of power manifestations, not by anything
that externally compels the other, but only through the pleasure
which is engendered in him and which, therefore, still has some
voluntary element in it. One adorns oneself for oneself, but can
do so only by adornment for others. It is one of the strangest
sociological combinations that an act, which exclusively serves
the emphasis and increased significance of the actor, neverthe-
less attains this goal just as exclusively in the pleasure, in the
visual delight it offers to others, and in their gratitude. For,
even the envy of adornment only indicates the desire of the en-
vious person to win like recognition and admiration for him-
self; his envy proves how much he believes these values to be
connected with the adornment. Adornment is the egoistic ele-
ment as such: it singles out its wearer, whose self-feeling it
embodies and increases at the cost of others (for, the same adorn-
ment of all would no longer adorn the individual). But, at the
same time, adornment is altruistic: its pleasure is designed for
the others, since its owner can enjoy it only insofar as he mirrors
himself in them; he renders the adornment valuable only
through the reflection of this gift of his. Everywhere, aesthetic
formation reveals that life orientations, which reality juxtaposes
as mutually*alien, or even pits against one another as hostile, are,
in fact, intimately interrelated. In the same way, the aesthetic
phenomenon of adornment indicates a point within sociologi-
cal interaction — the arena of man’s being-for-himself and being-
for-the-other — ^where these two opposite directions are mutually
dependent as ends and means.

Adornment intensifies or enlarges the impression of the per-
sonality by operating as a sort of radiation emanating from it.
For this reason, its materials have always been shining metals
and precious stones. They are ‘‘adornment” in a narrower sense
than dress and coiffure, although these, too, “adorn.” One may
speak of human radioactivity in the sense that every individual
is surrounded by a larger or smaller sphere of significance radiat-
ing from him; and everybody else, who deals with him, is im-
mersed in this sphere. It is an inextricable mixture of physiologi-
cal and psychic elements: the sensuously observable influences
which issue from an individual in the direction of his environ-
ment also are, in some fashion, the vehicles of a spiritual fulgura-

340 Secrecy

tion. They operate as the symbols of such a fulguration even
where, in actuality, they are only external, where no suggestive
power or significance of the personality flows through them.
The radiations of adornment, the sensuous attention it provokes,
supply the personality with such an enlargement or intensifica-
tion of its sphere: the personality, so to speak, is more when it is
adorned.

Inasmuch as adornment usually is also an object of con-
siderable value, it is a synthesis of the individual’s having and
being; it thus transforms mere possession into the sensuous and
emphatic perceivability of the individual himself. This is not
true of ordinary dress which, neither in respect of having nor
of being, strikes one as an individual particularity; only the
fancy dress, and above all, jewels, which gather the personality’s
value and significance of radiation as if in a focal point, allow the
mere having of the person to become a visible quality of its
being. And this is so, not although adornment is something
‘‘superfluous,” but precisely because it is. The necessary is much
more closely connected with the individual; it surrounds his
existence with a narrower periphery. The superfluous ‘‘flows
over,” that is, it flows to points which are far removed from its
origin but to which it still remains tied: around the precinct of
mere necessity, it lays a vaster precinct which, in principle, is
limitless. According to its very idea, the superfluous contains
no measure. The free and princely character of our being in-
creases in the measure in which we add superfluousness to our
having, since no extant structure, such as is laid down by neces-
sity, imposes any limiting norm upon it.

This very accentuation of the personality, however, is
achieved by means of an impersonal trait. Everything that
‘‘adorns” man can be ordered along a scale in terms of its close-
ness to the physical body. The “closest” adornment is typical
of nature peoples: tattooing. The opposite extreme is repre-
sented by metal and stone adornments, which are entirely un-
individual and can be put on by everybody. Between these two
stands dress, which is not so inexchangeable and personal as
tattooing, but neither so un-individual and separable as jewelry,
whose very elegance lies in its impersonality. That this nature
of stone and metal — solidly closed within itself, in no way allud-

Adornment Ml

ing to any individuality; hard, unmodifiable — is yet forced to
serve the person, this is its subtlest fascination. What is really
elegant avoids pointing to the specifically individual; it always
lays a more general, stylized, almost abstract sphere around man
— which, of course, prevents no finesse from connecting the
general with the personality. That new clothes are particularly
elegant is due to their being still '‘stiff*'; they have not yet ad-
justed to the modifications of the individual body as fully as
older clothes have, which have been worn, and are pulled and
pinched by the peculiar movements of their wearer — thus com-
pletely revealing his particularity. This “newness,” this lack
of modification by individuality, is typical in the highest meas-
ure of metal jewelry: it is always new; in untouchable coolness,
it stands above the singularity and destiny of its wearer. This is
not true of dress. A long-worn piece of clothing almost grows to
the body; it has an intimacy that militates against the very
nature of elegance, which is something for the “others,” a social
notion deriving its value from general respect.

If jewelry thus is designed to enlarge the individual by add-
ing something super-individual which goes out to all and is
noted and appreciated by all, it must, beyond any effect that its
material itself may have, possess style. Style is always something
general. It brings the contents of personal life and activity into
a form shared by many and accessible to many. In the case of
a work of art, we are the less interested in its style, the greater
the personal uniqueness and the subjective life expressed in it.
For, it is with these that it appeals to the spectator’s personal
core, too — of the spectator who, so to speak, is alone in the whole
world with this work of art. But of what we call handicraft —
which because of its utilitarian purpose appeals to a diversity of
men — we request a more general and typical articulation. We
expect not only that an individuality with its uniqueness be
voiced in it, but a broad, historical or social orientation and
temper, which make it possible for handicraft to be incorporated
into the life-systems of a great many different individuals. It is
the greatest mistake to think that, because it always functions
as the adornment of an individual, adornment must be an indi-
vidual work of art. Quite the contrary: because it is to serve
the individual, it may not itself be of an individual nature — ^as

342 Secrecy

little as the piece of furniture on which we sit, or the eating
utensil which we manipulate, may be individual works of art.
The work of art cannot, in principle, be incorporated into an-
other life — it is a self-sufficient world. By contrast, all that occu-
pies the larger sphere around the life of the individual, must
surround it as if in ever wider concentric spheres that lead back
to the individual or originate from him. The essence of styliza-
tion is precisely this dilution of individual poignancy, this gen-
eralization beyond the uniqueness of the personality — which,
nevertheless, in its capacity of base or circle of radiation, carries
or absorbs the individuality as if in a broadly flowing river. For
this reason, adornment has always instinctively been shaped in
a relatively severe style.

Besides its formal stylization, the material means of its social
purpose is its brilliance. By virtue of this brilliance, its wearer
appears as the center of a circle of radiation in which every close-
by person, every seeing eye, is caught. As the flash of the precious
stone seems to be directed at the other — like the lightning of
the glance the eye addresses to him — it carries the social meaning
of jewels, the being-for-the-other, which returns to the subject
as the enlargement of his own sphere of significance. The radii
of this sphere mark the distance which jewelry creates between
men — “I have something which you do not have.’' But, on the
other hand, these radii not only let the other participate: they
shine in his direction; in fact, they exist only for his sake. By
virtue of their material, jewels signify, in one and the same act,
an increase in distance and a favor.

For this reason, they are of such particular service to vanity —
which needs others in order to despise them. This suggests the
profound difference which exists between vanity and haughty
pride: pride, whose self-consciousness really rests only upon
itself, ordinarily disdains ‘‘adornment” in every sense of the
word. A word must also be added here, to the same effect, on
the significance of ‘‘genuine” material. The attraction of the
“genuine,” in all contexts, consists in its being more than its
immediate appearance, which it shares with its imitation. Un-
like its falsification, it is not something isolated; it has its roots
in a soil that lies beyond its mere appearance, while the un-
authentic is only what it can be taken for at the moment. The

Adornment 343

“genuine"’ individual, thus, is the person on whom one can
rely even when he is out of one’s sight. In the case of jewelry,
this more-than-appearance is its value ^ which cannot be guessed
by being looked at, but is something that, in contrast to skilled
forgery, is added to the appearance. By virtue of the fact that
this value can always be realized, that it is recognized by all, that
it possesses a relative timelessness, jewelry becomes part of a
super-contingent, super-personal value structure. Talmi-gold
and similar trinkets are identical with what they momentarily
do for their wearer; genuine jewels are a value that goes beyond
this; they have their roots in the value ideas of the whole social
circle and are ramified through all of it. Thus, the charm and
the accent they give the individual who wears them, feed on this
super-individual soil. Their genuineness makes their aesthetic
value — which, too, is here a value “for the others” — a symbol
of general esteem, and of membership in the total social value
system.

There once existed a decree in medieval France which pro-
hibited all persons below a certain rank to wear gold ornaments.
The combination which characterizes the whole nature of adorn-
ment unmistakably lives in this decree: in adornment, the socio-
logical and aesthetic emphasis upon the personality fuses as if
in a focus; being-for-oneself and being-for-others become recipro-
cal cause and effect in it. Aesthetic excellence and the right to
charm and please, are allowed, in this decree, to go only to a
point fixed by the individual’s social sphere of significance. It is
precisely in this fashion that one adds, to the charm which adorn-
ment gives one’s whole appearance, the sociological charm of
being, by virtue of adornment, a representative of one’s group,
with whose whole significance one is “adorned.” It is as if the
significance of his status, symbolized by jewels, returned to the
individual on the very beams which originate in him and en-
large his sphere of impact. Adornment, thus, appears as the
means by which his social power or dignity is transformed into
visible, personal excellence.

Centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, finally, appear to
be fused in adornment in a specific form, in the following
information. Among nature peoples, it is reported, women’s
private property generally develops later than that of men and,

344 Secrecy

originally, and often exclusively, refers to adornment. By con-
trast, the personal property of the male usually begins with
weapons. This reveals his active and more aggressive nature:
the male enlarges his personality sphere without waiting for
the will of others. In the case of the more passive female nature,
this result — although formally the same in spite of all external
differences — depends more on the others’ good will. Every prop-
erty is an extension of personality; property is that which obeys
our wills, that in which our egos express, and externally realize,
themselves. This expression occurs, earliest and most completely,
in regard to our body, which thus is our first and most uncondi-
tional possession. In the adorned body, we possess more; if we
have the adorned body at our disposal, we are masters over more
and nobler things, so to speak. It is, therefore, deeply significant
that bodily adornment becomes private property above all: it
expands the ego and enlarges the sphere around us which is
filled with our personality and which consists in the pleasure and
the attention of our environment. This environment looks with
much less attention at the unadorned (and thus as if less "ex-
panded”) individual, and passes by without including him. The
fundamental principle of adornment is once more revealed in
the fact that, under primitive conditions, the most outstanding
possession of women became that which, according to its very
idea, exists only for others, and which can intensify the value
and significance of its wearer only through the recognition that
flows back to her from these others. In an aesthetic form, adorn-
ment creates a highly specific synthesis of the great convergent
and divergent forces of the individual and society, namely, the
elevation of the ego through existing for others, and the eleva-
tion of existing for others through the emphasis and extension of
the ego. This aesthetic form itself stands above the contrasts be-
tween individual human strivings. They find, in adornment,
not only the possibility of undisturbed simultaneous existence,
but the possibility of a reciprocal organization that, as anticipa-
tion and pledge of their deeper metaphysical unity, transcends
the disharmony of their appearance.

Chapter 4

The Secret Society

THE SECRET IS A SOCIOLOG-
ical determination characteristic of the reciprocal relations be-
tween group elements; or, rather, together with other relational
forms, it constitutes their relationship as a whole. But it may
also characterize a group in its totality: this applies to the case
of “secret societies.” As long as the existence, the activities, and
the possessions of an individual are secret, the general sociologi-
cal significance of the secret is isolation, contrast, and egoistic
individualization. The sociological significance of the secret is
external, namely, the relationship between the one who has
the secret and another who does not. But, as soon as a whole
group uses secrecy as its form of existence, the significance be-
comes internal: the secret determines the reciprocal relations
among those who share it in common. Yet, since even here there
is the exclusion (with its specific nuances) of the non-initiates,
the sociology of the secret society is confronted with the com-
plicated problem of ascertaining how intra-group life is determ-
ined by the group’s secretive behavior toward the outside. I do
not preface this discussion by a systematic classification of secret
societies, which would have only an external, historical interest;
even without it, essential categories will emerge by themselves.

§ 1. Protection and Confidence

The first internal relation typical of the secret society is the
reciprocal confidence ® among its members. It is required to
a particularly great extent, because the purpose of secrecy is,
above all, protection. Of all protective measures, the most radical
is to make oneself invisible. In this respect, the secret society

« **Vertraueny i.e., both “confidence” and “trust.” Both terms are used in this
translation, according to context. — ^Tr.

345

346 The Secret Society

differs fundamentally from the individual who seeks the protec-
tion of secrecy. The individual can properly do so only in
regard to particular undertakings or situations; as a whole, he
can, to be sure, hide for certain periods of time, but his existence,
except for very abstruse combinations, cannot itself be a secret.
This is quite possible, however, for a societal unit. Its elements
may live in the most frequent interactions; but the fact that
they form a society — a conspiracy or a gang of swindlers, a reli-
gious conventicle or an association for engaging in sexual orgies
— can essentially, as well as permanently, be a secret.

In this type, then, it is not the individuals, but the group
they form, which is concealed. It must be distinguished from
another type, where the formation of the group is completely
known, while the membership, the purpose, or the specific rules
of the association remain secret. Examples are many secret orders
among nature peoples; also the Freemasons. Secrecy protects this
type less than it does the former, since what is known always
offers points of attack for further penetration. On the other
hand, such relatively secret societies often have the advantage of
a certain elasticity. Since their existence is manifest to a certain
extent from the beginning, they can bear further revelations
more easily than can those societies whose very life is secret, and
whose mere discovery frequently spells destruction — their secret
usually rests on the radical alternatives of All or Nothing.

The fact that secrets do not remain guarded forever is the
weakness of the secret society. It is therefore said quite correctly
that the secret known by two is no longer a secret. The protec-
tion which secret societies offer is thus absolute, but only tempor-
ary. In fact, for contents of a positve social value to be lodged in
secret societies is only a transition which, after a certain period
of growing strength, they no longer need. Secrecy, therefore,
eventually comes to resemble the mere protection which is
gained by resisting disturbances; and it is appropriate for it to
yield to the other kind of protection, namely, strength, which
is capable of coping with disturbances. Under these conditions,
the secret society is the suitable social form for contents which
still (as it were) are in their infancy, subject to the vulnerability
of early developmental stages. A new insight, a young religion,

Protection and Confidence 347

morality, or party, is often still weak and needs protection, and
for this reason conceals itself.

Periods in which new contents of life develop against the
resistance of existing powers are predestined, therefore, to wit-
ness the growth of secret societies. This is shown, for instance,
by the eighteenth century. At that time — merely to give an
example — the elements of the liberal party already existed in
Germany, but their appearance in the form of a permanent
structure was still prevented by political conditions. The secret
order was the form under whose protection the germs could be
preserved and strengthened — a service rendered particularly
by the order of the Illuminati.

But the secret society protects the decaying as well as the
growing development. The flight into secrecy is a ready device
for social endeavors and forces that are about to be replaced by
new ones. In these cases, secrecy constitutes a sort of transitional
stage between being and not-being. When, by the end of the
Middle Ages, the German communal associations began to be
suppressed by the strengthened central powers, they developed
a far-flung secret life through hidden assemblies and compacts
and through the secret exercise of law and violence — like ani-
mals seek the protection of a hiding-place when they go to their
death. This double function of the secret order as a form of
protection — as in an interim arrangement for rising as well as
for sinking forces — is perhaps most evident in religious develop-
ments. As long as the Christian communities were prosecuted
by the state, they were often forced to seek refuge for their as-
semblies, their worship, their whole existence, in concealment.
But, once Christianity became a state religion, it was the adher-
ents of the persecuted, dying paganism who had to resort to the
same concealment of their cultural associations into which they
had previously forced the now dominant religion. In general,
the secret society emerges everywhere as the counterpart of
despotism and police restriction, as the protection of both the
defensive and the offensive in their struggle against the over-
whelming pressure of central powers — by no means of political
powers only, but also of the church, as well as of school classes
and families.

Corresponding to this protective character as an external

348 The Secret Society

quality, there is in the secret society, as already noted, the in-
ternal quality of reciprocal confidence among its members —
the very specific trust that they are capable of keeping silent.
According to their content, associations rest upon premises of
various kinds of confidence: confidence in business ability, in
religious conviction, in courage, love, decency, or — in the case
of criminal groups — in the radical break with moral concerns.
But as soon as the society becomes secret, it adds to the trust de-
termined by its particular purpose, the formal trust in secrecy.
This, evidently, is faith-in-the-person of a sociologically more
abstract character than any other, since every possible common
content may be subject to it. Furthermore (but for exceptions),
no other kind of confidence needs such uninterrupted subjective
renewal. For, in the cases of faith in affection, energy, morality,
intelligence, decency, or tact, it is more likely that there are
certain facts which, once for all, justify the faith and its extent,
and which reduce to a minimum the probability of deceit. By
contrast, the chance of “talking” rests on momentary impru-
dence, on the tenderness or excitement of a mood, or on the
nuance, perhaps unconscious, of some emphasis. The preserva-
tion of the secret is something so unstable; the temptations of
betrayal are so manifold; the road from discretion to indiscre-
tion is in many cases so continuous, that the unconditional
trust in discretion involves an incomparable preponderance of
the subjective factor.

For this reason, secret societies offer a very impressive school-
ing in the moral solidarity among men. Their rudimentary
forms begin with any two persons who share a secret; their
diffusion in all places and at all times is immense and has hardly
ever been appreciated even quantitatively. For, in the confidence
of one man in another lies as high a moral value as in the fact
that the trusted person shows himself worthy of it. Perhaps it is
even more free and meritorious, since the trust we receive con-
tains an almost compulsory power, and to betray it requires
thoroughly positive meanness. By contrast, confidence is “given”;
it cannot be requested in the same manner in which we are
requested to honor it, once we are its recipients.

Silence S49

§ 2 . Silence

It is natural that secret societies should seek means for pro-
moting the secrecy psychologically, since it cannot be directly
enforced. Above all, there are the oath and the threat of punish-
ment, which need no discussion. More interesting is a technique
that is sometimes encountered, namely, the systematic instruc-
tion of the novice in the art of silence. In view of the above-
mentioned difficulties of wholly guarding one’s tongue and,
particularly, in view of the easy connection between thought
and utterance that exists in the more primitive stages (among
children and many nature peoples, thinking and speaking are
almost the same), it is necessary, above all, to learn how to be
silent, before silence regarding any particular item may be
expected.*^ Thus it is reported of a secret order in the Moluccan
Island of Ceram that the young man who seeks admittance, not
only is enjoined to keep silent concerning everything he experi-
ences on entering, but also is not permitted for weeks to say a
word to anybody, not even to his family. Certainly not merely
the educational factor of thoroughgoing silence operates here;
it is in line with this psychologically undifferentiated stage that,
during a period when something particular must be kept secret,
speaking altogether should be prohibited. This is the same radi-
calism in which primitive peoples often use the death penalty
in cases where later a partial sin is met with a partial punish-
ment; or in which, if this is their inclination, they pay for some-

7 If human sociation is conditioned by the capacity to speak, it is shaped by the
capacity to be silent, although this becomes obvious only upon occasion. Where all
conceptions, feelings, and impulses gush forth in speech without inhibition, they
produce a chaotic helter-skelter, instead of an organic coordination. We rarely
realize how necessary this capacity for silence is in the development of any regu-
lated interaction; we rather take it for granted. Nevertheless, it undoubtedly has a
historical development, which begins with the chatter of the child and of the Negro
for whom ideas gain some sort of concreteness and self-assurance only in the very
process of chattering. Correspondingly, this developmental process also begins with
the clumsy commands of silence mentioned above. It culminates in the urbanity of
high societal culture, among whose noblest possessions is the secure feeling of
knowing where one must speak, and where one must be silent. Thus, at a social
party (for instance), the host must refrain from talk as long as the guests carry the
conversation among themselves; but he must seize on it immediately, once it lags.
An intermediate case is perhaps presented by the medieval guilds which, by statute,
punished everybody who interrupted the alderman in his speech.

350 The Secret Society

thing momentarily attractive with a wholly disproportionate
part of their possessions.

In all this, there is manifested a specific '*lack of skill” whose
essence seems to consist in the incapability of engendering the
particular innervation needed for a particular purposive move-
ment: the clumsy person moves the whole arm where, for his
purpose, he should move only two fingers, or the whole body
where a precisely articulated movement of the arm would be
appropriate. In the cases quoted, the preponderance of psycho-
logical association immensely intensifies the danger of indis-
cretion and, at the same time, allows its prohibition to grow
beyond its particular, teleologically determined content and,
instead, to cover the whole function that includes this content.
If, on the other hand, the secret order of the Pythagoreans pre-
scribed several years’ silence for the novices, the intention, prob-
ably here too, went beyond mere education for guarding the
secrets of the order — but not because of that “lack of skill” but,
on the contrary, because the differentiated purpose itself was
enlarged in its own direction: the adept had to learn, not only
to keep silent about particular matters, but to master himself
generally. The order aimed at a rigorous self-discipline and a
stylized purity of life; and, whoever managed to be silent over
years, was also able, presumably, to resist temptations other than
talkativeness.

Another means for placing discretion upon an objective
basis was applied by the secret order of the Gallic Druids. The
content of their secrets lay, particularly, in spiritual songs which
every Druid had to memorize. But this was so arranged — above
all, probably, because of the prohibition to write the songs down
— that it required an extraordinary long time, even up to twenty
years. By means of this long period of learning before there was
anything essential that could have been betrayed, a gradual ha-
bituation to silence was developed. The fascination of disclosure
did not assail the undisciplined mind all at once, as it were; the
young mind was allowed to adapt itself slowly to resisting this
fascination. The rule according to which the songs could not be
written down, however, was more than a mere protective meas-
ure against the revelation of the secrets — it is part of much more
comprehensive sociological phenomena. The individual’s de-

Silence 351

pendence upon personal instruction, and the fact that the exclu-
sive source of the teaching was within the secret order — ^not
deposited in any objective piece of writing — these facts tied
every single member with incomparable closeness to the group,
and made him constantly feel that, if he were severed from this
substance, he would lose his own and could never find it again
anywhere.

It has perhaps not been sufficiently noted how much, in more
mature cultures, the objectification of the spirit promotes the
growing independence of the individual. So long as immediate
tradition, individual teaching, and, above all, establishment of
norms through persons in authority, determine the individual's
intellectual life, he is wholly integrated with his surrounding,
living group. It alone gives him the possibility of a fulfilled and
spiritual existence; the direction of all channels, through which
his life-contents flow to him, runs only between his social milieu
and himself; and he feels this at every moment. But, once the
labor of the species capitalizes its results in the form of writing,
in visible works, in enduring examples, this immediate, organic
flow between the actual group and its individual member is
interrupted. The life process of the individual no longer con-
tinuously binds him to the group without competition from
any other quarter: it can now feed on objective sources which
need not be personally present. The fact that this supply actually
orginates in processes of the social mind, is relatively irrelevant.
These processes are not only quite remote, having occurred in
generations which are no longer connected with the present feel-
ing of the individual, although his supply is the crystallization
of actions by these past generations. Above all, however, it is the
objective form of this supply, its separateness from subjective
personality, that opens a super-social source of food to the indi-
vidual. His spiritual content, both in degree and kind, thus
comes to depend much more markedly upon his capacity to
absorb, than upon any allotted offering. The particularly close
association within the secret society (to be discussed later in
greater detail), which has its affective category, so to speak, in
specific “trust," thus suggests that, where the secret society has
as its core the transmission of intellectual contents, it is fit for
it to avoid the written fixation of these matters.

352 The Secret Society
§ 3 . Written Communication ®

Some remarks on the sociology of the letter are appropriate
here, since the letter, evidently, represents a very peculiar con-
stellation even under the category of secrecy. In the first place,
writing is opposed to all secrecy. Prior to its general use, every
legal transaction, however simple, had to be concluded before
witnesses. The written form replaced this necessity, inasmuch as
it involves an unlimited, even if only potential, “publicity**:
not only the witnesses, but everybody in general, may know of
the business concluded.

Our consciousness has a peculiar form at its disposal, which
can only be designated as “objective spirit.** Natural laws and
moral imperatives, concepts and artistic creations lie ready, as
it were, for everybody able and willing to use them; but, in
their timeless validity, they are independent of whether, when,
and by whom they are thus used. Truth, as an intellectual
phenomenon, is something quite different from its passing, actual
object: it remains true, no matter whether or not it is known and
acknowledged. The moral and juridical law is valid, whether
lived by or not. Writing is a symbol, or visible vehicle, of this
immeasurably important category. In being written down, the
intellectual content receives an objective form, an existence
which, in principle, is timeless, a successively and simultaneously
unlimited reproducibility in the consciousness oP individuals.
But its significance and validity are fixed, and thus do not de-
pend on the presence or absence of these psychological realiza-
tions. Writing, thus, possesses an objective existence which re-
nounces all guarantees of remaining secret.

The letter, more specifically, is likewise wholly unprotected
against anybody*s taking notice of it. It is for this reason, perhaps,
that we react to indiscretion concerning letters as to something
particularly ignoble — so that, for subtler ways of feeling, it is
the very defenselessness of the letter which protects its secrecy.
The mixture of these two contrasts — the objective elimination
of all warranty of secrecy, and the subjective intensification of
this warranty — constitutes the letter as a specific sociological

8 In the original, this section, printed in smaller type, is called *'Exkurs iiber den
schriftlichen Verkehr** (Note on Written Communication). — Tr.

Written Communication 353

phenomenon. The form of expression by letter is an objectifica-
tion of its content, which involves, on the one hand, the letter’s
being addressed to one particular person and, on the other hand,
the correlate of this first fact, namely, the personal and subjec-
tive character in which the letter writer (in contrast to the writer
of literature) presents himself. It is particularly in this second
respect that the letter is a unique form of communication. Indi-
viduals in physical proximity give each other more than the
mere content of their words. Inasmuch as each of them sees the
other, is immersed in the unverbalizable sphere of his mood,
feels a thousand nuances in the tone and rhythm of his utter-
ances, the logical or the intended content of his words gains an
enrichment and modification for which the letter offers only
very poor analogies. And even these, on the whole, grow only
from the memories of direct personal contact between the cor-
respondents.

It is both the advantage and the disadvantage of the letter
that it gives, in principle, only the pure, objective content of
our momentary ideational life, while being silent concerning
what one is unable, or does not wish, to say. But the characteristic
of the letter is that it is, nevertheless, something wholly subjec-
tive, momentary, solely-personal (except for cases where it is
a treatise in unprinted form) — and, by no means, only when it is
a lyrical outburst, but also when it is a perfectly concrete com-
munication. This objectification of the subjective, this stripping
of the subjective element of everything pertaining to the matter
at issue and to oneself which one does not (as it happens) want
to reveal at the moment, is possible only in periods of high cul-
ture. It is then that one adequately masters the psychological
technique which enables one to give a permanent form to mo-
mentary moods and thoughts, and to consider and receive them
with the understanding that they are momentary, commensurate
with the requirements of the situation. Where an inner produc-
tion has the character of a ‘"work,” this permanent form is en-
tirely adequate; but, in the letter, there lies a contradiction be-
tween the character of its content and that of its form. Only
a sovereign objectivity and differentiation can produce, come
to terms with, and utilize, this contradiction.

This synthesis finds its further analogy in the mixture of de-

354 The Secret Society

terminateness and ambiguity which is characteristic of written
expressions and to, the highest extent, of the letter. Determinate-
ness and ambiguity are sociological categories of the first rank
in regard to all utterances between man and man; evidently, all
of the discussions in this chapter [part] belong in their general
area. Yet here the point is not simply the more-or-less, which
the one lets the other know about himself; but, rather, the fact
that, what he does give, is only more or less clear to its recipient,
and that this lack of clarity is as if compensated for by a corres-
ponding plurality of possible interpretations. It is almost certain
that there exists no enduring relation between individuals in
which the changing proportions of clarity and interpretability
of utterances do not play an essential role, although we usually
become aware of this role only through its practical results.
Superficially, the written utterance appears to be safer in the
sense that it seems to be the only one from which “no iota can
be taken away.” Yet this prerogative of the written word is only
the consequence of a lack of all those accompaniments — sound
of voice, tone, gesture, facial expression — which, in the spoken
word, are sources of both obfuscation and clarification. As a
matter of fact, however, the recipient does not usually content
himself with the purely logical sense of the words which the
letter surely transmits much less ambiguously than speech; in-
numerable times, indeed, the recipient cannot do so, because
even to grasp the mere logical sense, more than the logical sense
is required. For this reason, the letter is much more than the
spoken word the locus of “interpretations” and hence of mis-
understandings — despite its clarity, or more correctly, because
of it.

Corresponding to the cultural level at which a relationship
(or period of relationship) based on written communication is
possible, the qualitative characteristics of such a relation are,
likewise, sharply differentiated: what in human utterances is
clear and distinct, is more clear and distinct in the letter than in
speech, and what is essentially ambiguous, is more ambiguous.
Expressed in terms of the categories of freedom and unfreedom
on the part of the recipient of the utterance: his understanding,
in regard to its logical core, is less free; but, in regard to its
deeper and personal significance, his understanding is freer in

Secrecy and Sociation 355

the case of the letter than in that of speech. One may say that,
whereas speech reveals the secret of the speaker by means of all
that surrounds it — ^which is visible but not audible, and which
also includes the imponderables of the speaker himself — the
letter conceals this secret. For this reason, the letter is clearer
than speech where the secret of the other is not the issue; but
where it is the issue, the letter is more ambiguous. By the ‘‘secret
of the other” I understand his moods and qualities of being,
which cannot be expressed logically, but on which we neverthe-
less fall back innumerable ‘times, even if only in order to under-
stand the actual significance of quite concrete utterances. In
the case of speech, these helps to interpretation are so fused with
its conceptual content that both result in a wholly homogeneous
understanding. This is, perhaps, the most decisive instance of
the general fact that man is quite incapable of distinguishing
what he actually sees, hears, and experiences from what his
interpretation makes of it through additions, subtractions, and
transformations. It is one of the intellectual achievements of
written communication that it isolates one of the elements of
this naive homogeneity, and thus makes visible the number of
fundamentally heterogeneous factors which constitute our (ap-
parently soVmple) mutual “understanding.”

§ 4. Secrecy and Sociation

In these questions concerning techniques of keeping secrets,
it must not be forgotten that the secret is not only a means under
whose protection the material purposes of a group may be fur-
thered: often, conversely, the very formation of a group is de-
signed to guarantee the secrecy of certain contents. This occurs
in the special type of secret societies whose substance is a secret
doctrine, some theoretical, mystical, or religious knowledge.
Here, secrecy is its own sociological purpose: certain insights
must not penetrate into the masses; those who know form a
community in order to guarantee mutual secrecy to one another.
If they were a mere sum of unconnected individuals, the secret
would soon be lost; but sociation offers each of them psychologi-
cal support against the temptation of disclosure. Sociation coun-
terbalances the isolating and individualizing effect of the secret

356 The Secret Society

which I have emphasized. All sorts of sociation shift the needs
for individualization and socialization back and forth within
their forms, even within their contents — as if the requirement
of an enduring mixture were met by the employment of elements
constantly changing in quality. The secret society compensates
for the separating factor inherent in every secret by the simple
fact that it is a society.

Secrecy and individualization are so closely associated that
sociation may play two wholly different roles in regard to secrecy.
Sociation may be directly sought, as has just been emphasized,
in order to compensate, in part, for the isolating consequences
of continuing secrecy — in order to satisfy within secrecy the
impulse toward communion which the secret destroys in regard
to the outside. On the other hand, secrecy greatly loses in sig-
nificance whenever, for reasons of content, individualization
is fundamentally excluded. The Freemasons stress their wish
of being the most general society, “the union of unions," the
only group which rejects all particularistic elements and wants
to appropriate only what is common to all good men. Hand in
hand with this ever more decisive tendency, there has developed
among them the growing indifference toward the secret character
of the lodges, which have come to be limited to mere external
formalities. It is thus not contradictory for secrecy to be some-
times favored, sometimes dissolved, by sociation — these are
merely different forms in which the relation between secrecy and
individualization finds expression. An analogy is the connec-
tion between weakness and fear, which shows itself in the weak
person’s seeking sociation for protection, as well as in his avoid-
ing it for fear of greater dangers from sociation than from isola-
tion.

§ 5 . Hierarchy

The gradual initiation of the member into the secret society,
which was touched upon above, belongs in a very comprehen-
sive area of sociological forms, within which secret societies are
marked in a particular way. This area is the principle of hier-
archy, or graduated differentiation, of the elements in a society.
Secret societies, above all others, carry through the division of

Hierarchy 357

labor and the gradation of their members with great finesse and
thoroughness. This is related to a characteristic of them, to be
discussed later, namely, the highly developed consciousness of
their life. By virtue of it, organically instinctive forces are re-
placed by a constantly regulating will; and growth from within
is exchanged for constructive purposiveness. This rationalistic
nature of their organization finds no more visible expression than
in its clear-cut and well-balanced structure. An example is the
Czech secret society '‘Omladina,** mentioned earlier,® which was
formed on the model of a group of the Carbonari and became
known, in 1893, through a legal process. The directors of the
“Omladina” were divided into “thumbs” and “fingers.” The
“thumb,” chosen by the members in secret session, chose four
“fingers,” who again chose a thumb. This second thumb intro-
duced himself to the first, chose four fingers who chose a thumb;
and thus the process of organization continued. The first thumb
knew all thumbs, but they did not know one another. Among
all fingers, only those four knew one another who were subor-
dinated to a common thumb. All transactions of the “Omladina”
were conducted by the first thumb, the “dictator.” He informed
the other thumbs of all intended actions; the thumbs then issued
orders to their subordinate fingers, who relayed the orders to
the ordinary members assigned to them.

Evidently, the fact that the secret society must be built up
from its basis by means of a conscious, reflective will, gives free
reign to the peculiar passion engendered by such arbitrarily
disposing, organizational activities of planning important sche-
mata. All system-building, whether of science, conduct, or so-
ciety, involves the assertion of power: it subjects material outside
of thought to a form which thought has cast. If this is true of all
attempts at organizing a group according to principles, it is
especially true of the secret society, which does not grow but is
built, and which can count on fewer pre-formed parts than
can any despotic or socialistic system. In addition to making
plans, in addition to the constructive impulse, both of which,
themselves, are expressions of a will to power, there is here the
special challenge of completely controlling a large, potentially
and ideally subordinated group of human beings, by developing
» Cf. pp. 171-172 above. — Tr.

356 The Secret Society

Secrecy and individualization are so closely associated that
sociation may play two wholly different roles in regard to secrecy.
Sociation may be directly sought, as has just been emphasized,
in order to compensate, in part, for the isolating consequences
of continuing secrecy — in order to satisfy within secrecy the
impulse toward communion which the secret destroys in regard
to the outside. On the other hand, secrecy greatly loses in sig-
nificance whenever, for reasons of content, individualization
is fundamentally excluded. The Freemasons stress their wish
of being the most general society, '‘the union of unions,'* the
only group which rejects all particularistic elements and wants
to appropriate only what is common to all good men. Hand in
hand with this ever more decisive tendency, there has developed
among them the growing indifference toward the secret character
of the lodges, which have come to be limited to mere external
formalities. It is thus not contradictory for secrecy to be some-
times favored, sometimes dissolved, by sociation — these are
merely different forms in which the relation between secrecy and
individualization finds expression. An analogy is the connec-
tion between weakness and fear, which shows itself in the weak
person's seeking sociation for protection, as well as in his avoid-
ing it for fear of greater dangers from sociation than from isola-
tion.

§ 5 . Hierarchy

Hierarchy 357

labor and the gradation of their members with great finesse and
thoroughness. This is related to a characteristic of them, to be
discussed later, namely, the highly developed consciousness of
their life. By virtue of it, organically instinctive forces are re-
placed by a constantly regulating will; and growth from within
is exchanged for constructive purposiveness. This rationalistic
nature of their organization finds no more visible expression than
in its clear-cut and well-balanced structure. An example is the
Czech secret society “Omladina,** mentioned earlier,® which was
formed on the model of a group of the Carbonari and became
known, in 1893, through a legal process. The directors of the
‘"Omladina” were divided into “thumbs*' and “fingers.” The
“thumb,” chosen by the members in secret session, chose four
“fingers,” who again chose a thumb. This second thumb intro-
duced himself to the first, chose four fingers who chose a thumb;
and thus the process of organization continued. The first thumb
knew all thumbs, but they did not know one another. Among
all fingers, only those four knew one another who were subor-
dinated to a common thumb. All transactions of the “Omladina”
were conducted by the first thumb, the “dictator.” He informed
the other thumbs of all intended actions; the thumbs then issued
orders to their subordinate fingers, who relayed the orders to
the ordinary members assigned to them.

358 The Secret Society

a scheme of positions with their rank interrelations. Occasion-
ally, this passion is quite characteristically severed from all
purposiveness, and revels in wholly fantastic hierarchy construc-
tions, as, for instance, in the “high degrees” of degenerate Free-
masonry. I shall only cite some typical details of the organiza-
tion of the “Order of African Master Builders.” It came into
existence in Germany and France after the middle of the
eighteenth century. Although itself constructed on Masonic prin-
ciples, it aimed at the destruction of Freemasonry. The adminis-
tration of the society (which was very small) lay in the hands of
fifteen officers: Summus Magister, Summi Magistri Locum
T enenSj Prior ^ Sub prior ^ Magister, etc. There were seven degrees
of the order: the Scotch Apprentice, Scotch Brother, Scotch
Master, Scotch Knight, Eques Regii, Eques de Secta Consueta,
Eques Silentii Regii, etc.

§ 6 . Ritual

The growth of ritual in secret societies stands under the
same developmental conditions as does hierarchy. The extraor-
dinary freedom and wealth of forms here, too, derives from the
characteristic fact that the organization of the society is not pre-
determined by historical precedent, but is built up from its own
basis. There are perhaps no other external traits, which are so
typical of the secret society, and so sharply distinguish it from
the open society, than the high valuation of usages, formulas,
and rites, and their peculiar preponderance over the purposive
contents of the group, if not their contrast with them. Some-
times, in fact, the contents are less anxiously guarded than is
the secret of the ritual. Progressive Freemasonry maintains ex-
plicitly that it is not a secret association, that it has no reason for
concealing membership, intentions, and actions; that the vow
of secrecy refers exclusively to the form of the Masonic ritual.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the student order of the
Amicists decreed, in typical fashion, in the first paragraph of
its statutes: “The most sacred duty of every member is to keep
the deepest silence regarding such matters as concern the wel-
fare of the order. Among these are: signs of the order and of
recognition, names of the brothers, ceremonies, etc.” Later in the

Ritual 359

same statute, the purpose and nature of the order are indicated
in detail and without any concealment. In a slim book describing
the constitution and the nature of the Carbonari, the enumera-
tion of the formulas and usages at the initiation of new mem-
bers and at meetings covers seventy-five printed pages. Further
examples are unnecessary. The role of the ritual in secret so-
cieties is sufficiently well known, from the religio-mystical orders
of antiquity down to the eighteenth-century Rosicrucians, on
the one hand, and, on the other, to the most dastardly criminal
gangs. The sociological motivations of the connection between
ritual and secret society are approximately as follows.

The striking feature in the treatment of ritual is not only
the rigor of its observance but, above all, the anxiousness with
which it is guarded as a secret. Its disclosure appears to be as
detrimental as that of the purposes and actions, or perhaps of
the very existence, of the society. The teleological aspect of this
is, probably, that the total action and interest sphere of the secret
society becomes a well rounded unity only through inclusion,
in the secret, of a whole complex of external forms. Under its
characteristic categories, the secret society must seek to create a
sort of life totality. For this reason, it builds round its sharply
emphasized purposive content a system of formulas, like a body
round a soul, and places both alike under the protection of
secrecy, because only thus does it become a harmonious whole
in which one part protects the other. The particular emphasis
with which the secrecy of the external element is thereby stressed,
is necessitated by the fact that this secrecy is not required so
obviously and so much by sheer, immediate interest as is the
secrecy of the objective group purpose.

This is not different from (for instance) the military organi-
zation and the religious community. In both, schematism, formu-
las, and the precise determination of conduct, play an important
role which, quite generally, can be explained in terms of the
fact that both of them claim the individual wholly. That is,
each projects the totality of life upon a specific plane; each, from
a particular viewpoint, fuses a plurality of forces and interests
into a closed unit. This, usually, is also the aim of the secret
society. To be sure, it may seize upon its members only in regard
to partial interests; and, in terms of its content, it may be a

360 The Secret Society

purely purposive association. But even in these cases, it quite
characteristically claims to a greater extent the whole individual,
connects its members in more of their totality, and mutually
obligates them more closely, than does an open society of identi-
cal content. Through the symbolism of the ritual, which excites
a whole range of vaguely delimited feelings beyond all particu-
lar, rational interests, the secret society synthesizes those interests
into a total claim upon the individual. By means of the ritual
form, the particular purpose of the secret society is enlarged
to the point of being a closed unit, a whole, both sociological
and subjective.

It must be added that, through such formalism, as well as
through the hierarchical organization itself, the secret society
makes itself into a sort of counter-image of the official world, to
which it places itself in contrast. Here we find the ubiquitous
sociological norm: that structures which resist larger, encom-
passing structures through opposition and separation, neverthe-
less themselves repeat the forms of these structures. Only a
structure that somehow can be considered a whole is capable
of strongly tying its members to itself. The kind of organic self-
sufficiency by virtue of which the same stream of life flows
through all group members, is borrowed by the group from the
larger whole, to whose forms the members had been adapted.
The smaller structure can meet this whole most viably, pre-
cisely by imitating it.

§ 7. Freedom

The same conditions, finally, involve still another motive in
the sociology of the ritual in secret societies. Every secret society
contains a measure of freedom, which the structure of the society
at large does not have. Whether the secret society, like the
fehme, supplements the inadequate judicature of the political
community; or like the conspiratory or criminal band, rebels
against its law; or like the Mysteries, stands beyond the com-
mands and prohibitions of the general society — the singling-out,
so characteristic of the secret society, always has a note of free-
dom: the society lives in an area to which the norms of the
environment do not extend.

Features of the Secret Society 361

The essence of the secret society, as such, is autonomy. But
this autonomy approaches anarchy: the consequences of leaving
the general normative order easily are rootlessness and the ab-
sence of a stable life-feeling and of a norm-giving basis. The fixed
and minute character of the ritual helps to overcome this lack. In
this, we see once more how much man needs a certain ratio
between freedom and law; and how, when he does not receive
it from one source, he seeks to supplement what he obtains of
the one by the missing quantity of the other, no matter from
what additional source, until he has the ratio he needs. In ritual,
the secret society voluntarily imposes upon itself a formal coer-
cion, a complement required by its material separateness and
autonomy. It is characteristic that, among the Freemasons, pre-
cisely those who enjoy the greatest political freedom, namely,
the Americans, request of all their lodges the most rigorous
uniformity of work procedure and ritual, whereas in Germany
the practice involves a greater autonomy of the individual lodge:
here. Freemasonry is so integrated with the general society that
it does not demand such freedoms as would easily lead to the
counterclaim of their being curtailed. In short, in the secret
society the nature of ritual — objectively often quite senseless
and schematically coercive — is by no means inconsistent with
that group freedom which resembles anarchy, with severance
from the norms of the inclusive society. On the contrary: just
as the widespread diffusion of secret societies is usually a proof
of public un-freedom, of a tendency toward police regimenta-
tion, and of political oppression, in short, just as it is a reaction
stemming from the need for freedom — so, conversely, the in-
ternal, ritual regimentation of secret societies reflects a measure
of freedom and severance from society at large which entails
the counter-norm of this very schematism, in order to restore
the equilibrium of human nature.

§ 8 . Features of the Secret Society as
Quantitative Modifications of
General Group Features

These last considerations suggest the methodological prin-
ciple on the basis of which I wish to analyze those traits of the

362 The Secret Society

secret society which have not yet been discussed. The question
is, to what extent can they be shown to be essentially quantita-
tive modifications of the typical features of sociation in general?
The justification of this conception of the secret society leads
once more to a consideration of its position in the whole com-
plex of sociological forms.

The secret element in societies is a primary sociological fact,
a particular kind and shading of togetherness, a formal quality
of relationship. In direct or indirect interaction with other such
qualities, it determines the shape of the group member or of
the group itself. Yet, from a historical standpoint, the secret
society is a secondary phenomenon; that is, it always develops
only within a society already complete in itself. To put it dif-
ferently: the secret society is characterized by its secrecy in the
same way in which other societies (or even secret societies them-
selves) are characterized by their superordination and subordi-
nation, or by their aggressive purposes, or by their imitative
character; but, that it can develop with these characteristics is
possible only on the condition that a society already exists.
Within this larger circle, it opposes it as a narrower one; what-
ever the purpose of the society, this opposition has, at any rate,
the sense of exclusion. Even the altruistic secret society, which
merely wants to render a certain service to the total group and
intends to disband after achieving it, evidently considers tem-
porary separation from this total group a technique unavoidable
in view of its purpose.

[a] SEPARATENESS, FORMALITY, CONSCIOUSNESS

Among the many smaller groups which are included in larger
ones, there is none whose sociological constellation forces it to
emphasize its formal self-sufficiency to the same extent as it
does the secret society. Its secret surrounds it like a boundary
outside of which there is nothing but materially, or at least
formally, opposite matter, a boundary which therefore fuses,
within itself, the secret society into a perfect unity. In groups
of every other sort, the content of group life, the actions of the
members in terms of rights and duties, can so occupy the mem-
bers* consciousness that, normally, the formal fact of sociation

Features of the Secret Society 363

plays scarcely any role at all. The secret society, on the other
hand, cannot allow its members to forget the distinct and em-
phatic consciousness that they form a society. In comparison
with other associations, it here is the passion of secrecy — always
felt and always to be preserved — ^which gives the group-form,
depending on it, a significance that is far superior to the sig-
nificance of content. The secret society completely lacks organic
growth, instinctive expansions, and, on the part of its members,
all naive, matter-of-fact feeling of belonging together and form-
ing a unit. However irrational, mystical, or emotional its con-
tents may be, the way in which it is formed is thoroughly con-
scious and intentional. In its consciousness of being a society —
a consciousness which is constantly emphasized during its forma-
tive period and throughout its lifetime — it is the opposite of
all spontaneous groups, in which the joining is only the expres-
sion, more or less, of elements which have grown together like
roots. Its social-psychological form clearly is that of the interest
group [Zweckverband], This constellation makes it understand-
able why the formal characteristics of group formation in gen-
eral are specifically pointed up in the secret society, and why
some of its essential sociological traits develop as mere quantita-
tive intensifications of very general types of relationship.

[b] seclusion: signs of recognition

One of these has already been indicated, namely, the charac-
terization as well as the cohesion of the secret society by means
of seclusion against the social environment. This is the function
of the often complicated signs of recognition through which the
individual legitimates himself as a member. It should be noted
that, prior to the more general diffusion of writing, these signs
were more indispensable than later, when their other sociolog-
ical uses became more important than those of mere legitima-
tion. As long as there were no credentials of acceptance, notifica-
tions, or written descriptions of persons, an association with
branches in several different places, had nothing but such signs
for excluding unauthorized persons, and for having only indi-
viduals entitled to them receive its benefits or communications.
These signs were revealed only to the legitimate members who,

364 The Secret Society

by means of them, were able to legitimate themselves wherever
the group existed, and who had the duty to keep them secret.

The purpose of seclusion is clearly illuminated by the de-
velopment of certain secret orders among nature peoples, espe-
cially in Africa and among the Indians. These orders are com-
posed only of men. Their essential purpose is to emphasize the
differentiation of men from women. Whenever their members
act in this capacity, they appear in masks, and women are usually
forbidden on severe penalty to approach them. Yet sometimes
women succeed in discovering the secret that the horrible ap-
paritions are not ghosts but their husbands. When this happens,
the orders often lose their whole significance and become harm-
less mummeries. The man of nature with his undifferentiated,
sensuous conception, cannot imagine a more perfect separate-
ness, such as he wants to emphasize, than for those who wish
it and are entitled to it to hide themselves, to make themselves
invisible. This is the crudest and, externally, most radical
manner of concealment: not only a particular act of man, but
all of man at once, is concealed — the group does not do some-
thing secret, but the totality of its members makes itself into
a secret. This form of the secret society is perfectly in line with
that primitive stage of mind in which the whole personality is
still absorbed in every particular activity, and in which the ac-
tivity is not yet sufficiently objectified to have any character that
the whole personality does not automatically share. It is also
understandable, therefore, why the whole separateness becomes
invalid once the secret of the mask is broken, and why, then, the
secret society loses its inner significance along with its means
and its expression.

[c] THE ARISTOCRATIC MOTIVE; ARISTOCRACY

The separateness of the secret society expresses a value:
people separate from others because they do not want to make
common cause with them, because they wish to let them feel their
superiority. This motive leads everywhere to group formations,
which evidently are very different from those undertaken for
objective purposes. By joining one another, those who want to
distinguish themselves give rise to the development of an aris-

Features of the Secret Society 365

tocracy, which strengthens and (so to speak) enlarges their
position and self-consciousness by the weight of their own sum.
Separation and group formation are thus connected through
the aristocratizing motive. In many cases, this connection gives
separation itself the stamp of something “special,'* in an honor-
ific sense. Even in school classes, it can be observed how small,
closely integrated cliques of classmates think of themselves as
the elite over against the others who are not organized — merely
because of the formal fact of constituting a special group; and
the others, through their hostility and envy, involuntarily ac-
knowledge this higher value. In these cases, secrecy and mystifi-
cation amount to heightening the wall toward the outside, and
hence to strengthening the aristocratic character of the group.

This significance of the secret society as the intensification
of sociological exclusiveness in general, is strikingly shown in
political aristocracies. Secrecy has always been among the requi-
sites of their regime. In the first place, by trying to conceal the
numerical insignificance of the ruling class, aristocracies exploit
the psychological fact that the unknown itself appears to be
fearsome, mighty, threatening. In Sparta, the number of war-
riors was kept secret as much as possible. In Venice, the same
end was intended by the decree that all nobili [noblemen] had
to wear a simple black costume: no striking dress was to call the
small number of men in power to the attention of the people.
This was even carried to the point where the group of the high-
est elite was concealed completely: the names of the three state
inquisitors were unknown to everybody except the council of
ten who elected them. In some Swiss aristocracies, one of the most
important authorities was simply called “the Secret Ones"; and
in Freiburg, the aristocratic families were known as “the secret
lineages" [die heimlichen Geschlechter], The democratic prin-
ciple, on the contrary, is associated with the principle of pub-
licity and, in the same sense, with the tendency toward general
and basic laws. For, these laws apply to an unlimited number
of subjects and are, therefore, public in their very essence. Con-
versely, the use of secrecy by aristocratic regimes is only the ex-
treme intensification of the social exclusiveness and exemption
which, ordinarily, make aristocracies opposed to general, funda-
mentally fixed legislations.

366 The Secret Society

Where the aristocratic idea does not characterize the policies
of a group but the disposition of an individual, the relation
between exclusiveness and secrecy manifests itself on a very
different plane. The morally and intellectually distinguished
person despises all concealment, because his inner certainty
makes him indifferent to what others know or do not know of
him, and to the question whether he is appraised correctly or
falsely by them, or held in high or low esteem. For him, secrecy
is a concession to outsiders; secrecy is dependence of conduct
upon regard for others. For this reason, the “mask*' which many
consider sign and proof of an aristocratic personality that is
turned away from the multitude, on the contrary proves the
importance of the multitude to the wearer of the mask. The
“mask” of the truly noble person is that even when he shows
himself without disguise, the many do not understand him, do
not even see him, so to speak.

[d] DEGREES OF INITIATION: FORMAL AND MATERIAL SEPARATION
FROM THE OUTSIDE

This exclusion of everything outside the group is a general
formal-sociological fact, which merely uses secrecy as a more
pointed technique. It attains a particular nuance in the plurality
of degrees in which it is customary for initiation into the secret
society, down to its last mysteries, to take place. The existence
of such degrees threw light earlier upon another sociological
feature of the secret society. As a rule, before he is even accepted
into the first degree, the novice must give a solemn promise of
secrecy concerning everything he may experience, whereby the
absolute, formal separation, achievable by secrecy, is effected.
Yet, inasmuch as the actual content or purpose of the society
becomes accessible to the neophyte only gradually — whether
this purpose is the perfect purification and sanctification of the
soul through the consecration of the mysteries, or the absolute
suspension of every moral barrier, as among the Assassins and
other criminal societies — the material separation is achieved
differently, in a more continuous, relative manner. In this ma-
terial respect, the neophyte is still closer to the status of non-
participant, from which testing and education eventually lead

Features of the Secret Society 367

him to grasp the totality or core of the association. This core,
evidently, thus gains a protection and isolation from the outside
far beyond those by means of the oath upon entrance. It is
seen to (as has already been shown in the example of the Druids)
that the still untried neophyte does not have much he could
betray: within the general secrecy that encompasses the group
as a whole, the graduated secrecy produces an elastic sphere of
protection (as it were) around its innermost essence.

The contrast between exoteric and esoteric members, such
as is attributed to the Pythagorean order, is the most poignant
form of this protective measure. The circle composed of those
only partially initiated formed a sort of buffer region against
the non-initiates. It is everywhere the dual function of the
‘‘middler” to connect and to separate, or, actually, rather to
play only one role which, according to our perceptual categories
and our viewpoint, we designate as connecting or as separating.
In the same way, the real unity of superficially contradictory
activities is here seen in its clearest light: precisely because the
lower grades of the order mediate the transition to the center
of the secret, they create a gradual densification of the sphere
of repulsion which surrounds this center and which protects
it more securely than could any abrupt and radical alternative
between total inclusion and total exclusion.

[e] GROUP EGOISM

In practice, sociological autonomy presents itself as group
egoism: the group pursues its own purposes with the same in-
considerateness for all purposes outside itself which, in the
case of the individual, is precisely called egoism. Usually, to be
sure, this inconsiderateness is morally justified in the conscious-
ness of the individual members by the fact that the group pur-
poses themselves have a super-individual, objective character;
that it is often impossible to name any particular individual
who profits from the group’s egoistic behavior; and that, as a
matter of fact, this behavior often requires the group members’
selflessness and sacrifice. But the point here is not to make any
ethical valuation, but only to stress the group’s separation from
its environment, which is brought about or characterized by the

S68 The Secret Society

egoism of the group. However, in the case of a small circle, which
intends to preserve and develop itself within a larger one, this
egoism has certain limits as long as it exists publicly. An open
association, no matter how violently it fights against other asso-
ciations within the same larger society, or against the general
foundations of this society itself, must always maintain that
the realization of its own ultimate purposes is to the advantage
of the whole; and the necessity of this outward assertion some-
what restricts the actual egoism of its actions. This necessity does
not exist in the case of secret societies, which always therefore,
at least potentially, can afford to be hostile to other groups or
to the whole. Non-secret groups cannot admit such a hostility,
and, therefore, cannot unconditionally practice it. Nothing sym-
bolizes, or possibly promotes, the separation of the secret society
from its social environment as decisively as the elimination of
the hypocrisy, or of the actual condescension, by means of
which the non-secret society is inevitably integrated with the
teleology of its environment.

[f] INCLUSIVENESS AND EXCLUSIVENESS AS GROUP PRINCIPLES

In spite of the actual quantitative delimitation of every true
community, there exists a considerable number of groups whose
inner tendency is to include all those who are not explicitly
excluded. Within certain political, religious, and status limits,
everybody is considered immediately as “belonging** so long
as he satisfies certain external conditions, which are usually not
a matter of his will, but are given with his existence itself. All
people, for instance, who are born within the territory of a given
state, are members, unless particular circumstances make ex-
ceptions of them, of the (often very complex) civic society. The
member of a given social class is included, as a matter of course,
in the social conventions and forms of connection of this class,
unless he becomes a voluntary or involuntary outsider. The
extreme case is the claim of a church that it includes all man-
kind; and that, if any individuals are excluded from the religious
association, which, ideally, is valid also for them, it is only
through historical accident, sinful stubbornness, or God*s special
intention.

Features of the Secret Society 369

We note here the distinction of two principles, which clearly
indicate a basic differentiation of the sociological significance
of groups generally, no matter how much practice may mix them
and make the difference lose some of its sharpness. On the one
hand, there is the principle of including everybody who is not
explicitly excluded; and, on the other, there is the principle of
excluding everybody who is not explicitly included. The second
type is represented in greatest purity by the secret society. The
unconditional character of its separation, which is borne by
the consciousness of it at every step of the group’s development,
causes, and is caused by, the fact that those who are not ex-
plicitly accepted, are for this simple reason explicitly excluded.
The Masonic order could no better have supported its recent
emphatic assertion that it is not a “secret order,” properly
speaking, than by simultaneously professing its ideal of includ-
ing all men, of representing humanity.

[g] SECLUSION AGAINST THE OUTSIDE AND INTERNAL COHESION

Here, as everywhere else, the intensified seclusion against the
outside is associated with the intensification of cohesion in-
ternally: we hjive here two sides, or external forms, of the same
sociological attitude. A purpose which occasions an individual
to enter into secret association with others, excludes almost
always such an overwhelming part of his general social circle
from participation, that the potential and real participants gain
rarity value. He must keep on good terms with them because it
is much more difficult to replace them here than (other things
being equal) in a legitimate association. Furthermore, every
discord inside the secret society brings danger of betrayal, which
usually both the self-preservation of the individual and that of
the group are interested in avoiding.

Finally, the isolation of the secret society from the surround-
ing social syntheses removes a number of occasions for conflict.
Among all the bonds of the individual, the bond of secret socia-
tion always has an exceptional position. In comparison with it,
the official bonds — familial, civic, religious, economic, through
rank and friendship — ^no matter how varied their contents,
touch contact surfaces of a very different kind and measure.

370 The Secret Society

Only the contrast with the secret societies makes it clear that
their claims criss-cross one another, because they lie (so to speak)
in the same plane. Since these claims openly compete for the
individual’s strength and interests, individuals collide within
any one of these circles: each individual is simultaneously
claimed by the interests of other groups.

The sociological isolation of the secret society greatly limits
such collisions. In accordance with its purpose and operation,
competing interests of open-society origin are shut out. Every
secret society — if only because it usually fills its own sphere
alone (the same individual hardly ever belongs to more than
one secret society) — exercises over its members a sort of absolute
dominion, which gives them little opportunity to engage in con-
flicts such as result from the coordination of the plurality of
spheres that represent open groups. The “king’s peace,’’ which
really ought to reign within every association, is promoted, in a
formally unsurpassable manner, by the peculiar and exceptional
conditions of the secret society. In fact, it seems as if, aside from
the more realistic reason in favor of the “king’s peace,’’ the mere
form of secrecy itself kept the members freer from other in-
fluences and disturbances, and thus facilitated their accord.
A certain English politician found the basis for the strength of
the English cabinet in the secrecy which surrounds it: everybody
who has ever been active in public life, he suggested, knows that
a small number of people can be brought to agree the more
easily, the more secret are its negotiations.

[h] CENTRALIZATION

Corresponding to the outstanding degree of cohesion within
the secret society is the thoroughness of its centralization. The
secret society offers examples of unconditional and blind obe-
dience to leaders who — although, naturally, they may also be
found elsewhere — are yet particularly remarkable in view of
the frequent anarchic character of the secret society that negates
all other law. The more criminal its purposes, the more un-
limited, usually, is the power of the leaders and the cruelty of
its exercise. The Assassins in Arabia; the Chauffeurs, a predatory
band with a widely ramified organization which raged, particu-

Features of the Secret Society 371

larly, in eighteenth-century France; the Gardunas in Spain, a
criminal society that had relations with the Inquisition from
the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century —
all these, whose very nature was lawlessness and rebellion, un-
conditionally and without any criticism submitted to chiefs
whom they themselves (as least in part) appointed.

The interrelation between the needs for freedom and for
a bond operates here; it appears in the rigor of ritual, which
combines the extremes of both: for the sake of a balanced life-
feeling, the excess of freedom from all otherwise valid norms
must be brought into equilibrium by a similarly excessive sub-
mission and renunciation of the will. Yet more essential, prob-
ably, is the necessity of centralization, which is the life condition
of the secret society. It is especially important for that type —
for instance, the criminal band — ^which lives off surrounding
groups, interferes with them through all kinds of radiations and
actions, and thus is gravely threatened by treason and the dis-
traction of interests, once it is no longer governed by the most
intransigent cohesion with its point of origin in its own center.

Secret societies which, for whatever reasons, fail to develop
a tightly solidifying authority are, therefore, typically exposed
to very grave 'dangers. Originally, the Waldenses were not a
secret society: they became one in the thirteenth century, only
because of external pressure to keep themselves hidden. This
made it impossible for them to meet regularly, which in turn
deprived their doctrine of its unity. A number of branches arose,
which lived and developed separately, and were often hostile to
one another. The order declined because it lacked the necessary
complement of the secret society: uninterruptedly effective cen-
tralization. Freemasonry, probably, owes the evident lag in its
power behind its diffusion and means, to the considerable
autonomy of its parts, which have neither a unified organization
nor a central authority. Their common features merely cover
principles and signs of recognition, and thus are traits of equality
and of relations between person and person only, not of cen-
tralization, which holds the energies of the members together
and is the complement of separation.

It is merely an exaggeration of this formal motive of cen-
tralization that secret societies are often directed by unknown

372 The Secret Society

leaders: the lower echelons are not to know whom they obey.
To be sure, this occurs, above all, for the sake of preserving the
secret. With this intention, it was developed to an extraordinary
degree in the organization of an early nineteenth-century Italian
secret society, the Welfic Knights, which worked for the libera-
tion and unification of Italy. At each of their various branches,
the Knights had a highest council of six persons, who did not
know one another and communicated only by means of an inter-
mediary, called “The Visible One.” But the preservation of
secrecy is by no means the only purpose of unknown leaders.
Instead, they exemplify the most extreme and abstract sublima-
tion of dependence upon a center: the tension between depend-
ent and leader reaches the highest degree when the leader be-
comes invisible. All that remains then, is the pure fact of obe-
dience — merciless, as it were, and unmodified by any personal
nuances — out of which the superordinate as a subject has
vanished. If obedience to impersonal authority, to mere office,
to the executor of an objective law, has the character of in-
vincible strength, it is intensified to the point of an uncanny
absoluteness when the ruling personality remains, in principle,
hidden. For if, with the visibility and familiarity of the ruler,
the individual suggestion and the power of personality are re-
moved from the relationship of domination, domination also
loses all attenuations, all relative and “human” elements in-
herent in the empirical, unique personality. Obedience is thus
colored by the feeling of subjection to an intangible power,
whose limits cannot be traced, and which can nowhere be seen,
but must, for this reason, be suspected everywhere. In the secret
society with an unknown leader, the general sociological cohe-
sion of a group through the unity of its ruling authority is
transferred, as it were, into an imaginary focus, and thus attains
its purest, most intense form.

[i] DE-INDIVIDUALIZATION

De-individualization is the sociological character which, in
the individual member, corresponds to this centralistic subordi-
nation. Where the immediate concern of the society is not the
interests of its elements; where the society rather transcends

Features of the Secret Society 37 S

itself (as it were) by using its members as means for purposes
and actions extraneous to them — the secret society shows, once
more, a heightened measure of leveling of the individuality, of
“de-selfing” [Entselbstung], Some measure of this is characteristic
of everything social, generally. But the secret society uses de-
individualization to compensate for the above-mentioned indi-
vidualizing and differentiating character of the secret. This be-
gins with the secret orders of nature peoples, whose appearance
and activities are accompanied almost everywhere by the wear-
ing of masks — so that an outstanding expert suggested that the
presence of masks among a nature people should at once make
one suspect the existence of secret societies. It is, of course, in
the nature of the secret order for its members to conceal them-
selves. But, when a particular individual appears and acts unam-
biguously as a member of a secret order, and merely does not
show what individuality (which is normally well known)
is associated with him, the disappearance of personality behind
its role is most strongly emphasized. In the Irish conspiracy
which was organized under the name of Clan-na-gael in
America in 1870, the individual members were never designated
by their names, but only by numbers. This, too, of course, was
done for the Jjractical purpose of secrecy; but, at the same time,
it proves how much this purpose suppresses individuality.
Leadership can proceed with much greater inconsiderateness
and indifference to individual wishes and capacities of persons
who appear only as numbers and who may not be known by
their personal names even to the other members (which at least
occurred in groups similar to the Clan-na-gael), than it can if
the group includes each member as a personal entity. No less
effective, toward the same end, is the comprehensive role and
strength of ritual, which always indicates the fact that the ob-
jective organization has overcome the personal element in the
members’ activities and contributions to the group. The hier-
archical order admits the individual only as the discharger of
a predetermined role; for each member, it holds ready a stylized
garb in which his personal outlines disappear.

374 The Secret Society

[j] EQUALITY OF MEMBERS

It is merely another name for this elimination of the dif-
ferentiated personality if secret societies practice great relative
equality among their members. This does not contradict the
despotic character of their organization: in all kinds of other
groups, too, despotism is correlated with the leveling of the
ruled. Within the secret society, there often is a brotherly equal-
ity among the members, which constitutes a sharp and tenden-
tious contrast to their differences in their other life situations.
Characteristically, this is most noticeable in secret societies of a
religio-ethical nature — ^which strongly accentuate brotherhood
— and, on the other hand, in those of an illegal character. In
his memoirs, Bismarck writes of a pederastic organization, wide-
spread in Berlin, with which he became acquainted as a young
justiciary; he stresses “the equalizing effect throughout all strata
of the collective practice of the forbidden.**

This de-personalization, wherein the secret group exagger-
ates in a one-sided manner a typical relationship between indi-
vidual and society, appears, finally, as characteristic irresponsi-
bility, Here, too, the mask is the most primitive phenomenon.
Most African secret orders are represented by a man disguised
as a spirit of the woods, who commits all violations, including
robbery and murder, against anyone he happens to meet. He is
not held responsible for his crimes — obviously, only because of
his mask. The mask is the somewhat clumsy form in which these
groups let the personalities of their members disappear, and
without which the members would undoubtedly be overtaken
by revenge and punishment. But responsibility is so imme-
diately connected with the ego (philosophically, too, the whole
problem of responsibility belongs in the problem of the ego),
that, for such naive feeling, the disguise of the person suspends
all responsibility.

This connection is used no less in political finesse. In the
North American House of Representatives, actual decisions are
made in the standing committees, with which the House is
almost always in agreement. But the transactions of these com-
mittees are secret; thus, the most important part of legislative
activity is hidden from the public. In large measure, this seems

Features of the Secret Society 375

to extinguish the political responsibility of the delegates, since
nobody can be held responsible for uncontrollable procedures.
Inasmuch as individual contributions toward a particular de-
cision remain hidden, the decision appears to be made by some
super-individual authority. Here, too, irresponsibility is the
consequence or the symbol of the intensified sociological de-
individualization, which corresponds to the secrecy of group
action. This also holds for all directorates, faculties, committees,
administrations, etc., whose transactions are secret: the indi-
vidual, as a person, disappears as the quasi-nameless group mem-
ber, and with his disappearance as a person disappears the re-
sponsibility that cannot be imagined to inhere in a being whose
concrete activities are intangible.

[k] THE SECRET SOCIETY AND THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

This one-sided intensification of general sociological fea-
tures is confirmed, finally, by the danger with which society
at large believes, rightly or wrongly, secret societies threaten it.
Where the over-all aim of the general society is strong (particu-
larly political) centralization, it is antagonistic to all special
associations, *quite irrespective of their contents and purposes.
Simply by being units, these groups compete with the principle
of centralization which alone wishes to have the prerogative of
fusing individuals into a unitary form. The preoccupation of
the central power with “special associations” runs through all
of political history — a point which is relevant in many respects
to the present investigations and has already been stressed.
A characteristic type of this preoccupation is suggested, for in-
stance, by the Swiss Convention of 1481, according to which no
separate alliances were permitted between any of the ten con-
federated states. Another example is the persecution of appren-
tices' associations by the despotism of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. A third is the tendency to disenfranchise local
political communities which is so often demonstrated by the
modern state.

The secret society greatly increases this danger which the
special association presents to the surrounding totality. Man
has rarely a calm and rational attitude toward what he knows

376 The Secret Society

only little or vaguely. Instead, his attitude consists in part in
levity, which treats the unknown as if it did not exist, and in
part in anxious fantasy, which, on the contrary, inflates it into
immense dangers and terrors. The secret society, therefore, ap-
pears dangerous by virtue of its mere secrecy. It is impossible
to know whether a special association might not one day use its
energies for undesirable purposes, although they were gathered
for legitimate ones: this fear is the main source of the basic
suspicion which central powers have of all associations among
their subjects.

In regard to groups which make it their principle to conceal
themselves, the suspicion that their secrecy hides dangers is all
the more readily suggested. The Orange Societies which were
organized in England, in the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, for the suppression of Catholicism, avoided all public dis-
cussion, working only in secret, through personal connections
and correspondence. But this very secrecy let them appear as a
public danger: the suspicion arose “that men, who shrank from
appealing to public opinion, meditated a resort to force.“ Purely
on the grounds of its secrecy, the secret order thus appears dan-
gerously close to a conspiracy against the reigning powers. How
much this is only an intensification of the general political
questionability of special associations is clearly shown in a case
like the following. The oldest German guilds offered their
members effective legal protection, and thus replaced the pro-
tection of the state. For this reason, the Danish kings promoted
them, since they saw in them a support of the public order.
But, on the other hand, for the very same reason, the guilds
also were considered to be competitors of the state: they were
condemned in this capacity by the Frankish capitularies — more
particularly, because they were designated as conspiracies. The
secret society is so much considered an enemy of the central
power that, even conversely, every group that is politically re-
jected, is called a secret society.

Part Five

Faithfulness and Gratitude;
Negativity of Collective
Behavior; the Stranger;
Metropolis

Chapter 1

Faithfulness and Gratitude

FAITHFULNESS IS ONE OF

those very general modes of conduct that may become important
in all interactions among men, no matter how different they
may be materially or sociologically. In superordinations, sub-
ordinations, coordinations; in collective hostilities toward third
parties as in collective friendships; in families and in regard to
the state; in love as well as in one’s relation to one’s occupational
group — in all these structures, examined purely in their socio-
logical constellations, faithfulness and its opposite become im-
portant. But faithfulness is significant as a sociological form of
the second order, as it were, as the instrument of relations which
already exist and endure. In its general form, the connection
between faithfulness and the sociological forms it supports is,
in a certain sense, like the connection between these forms and
the material contents and motives of social life.

Without the phenomenon we call faithfulness, society could
simply not exist, as it does, for any length of time. The elements
which keep it alive — the self-interest of its members, suggestion,
coercion, idealism, mechanical habit, sense of duty, love, inertia
— could not save it from breaking apart if they were not sup-
plemented by this factor. Its measure and significance, however,
cannot be determined in the given case, because its practical
effect always consists in replacing some other feeling, which
hardly ever disappears completely. The contribution of this
feeling is inextricably interwoven with that of faithfulness it-
self, in a composite result that resists quantitative analysis.

Because of the supplementary character of faithfulness, such
a term as “faithful love,” for instance, is somewhat misleading.
If love continues to exist in a relationship between persons, why
does it need faithfulness? If the partners are not, from the be-

379

380 Faithfulness and Gratitude

ginning, connected by it but, rather, by the primary and genuine
psychological disposition of love, why must faithfulness, as the
guardian of the relationship, be added after ten years if, by
definition, love remains identical even then, and still on its
own strength has its initial binding power? If linguistic usage
understands by faithful love what is simply enduring love, there
is no objection, of course. Words do not concern us here; what
is important is the existence of a specific psychic and sociological
state, which insures the continuance of a relationship beyond
the forces that first brought it about; which survives these forces
with the same synthesizing effect they themselves had originally;
and which we cannot help but designate as faithfulness,
although this term also has a very different meaning, namely,
the perseverance of these forces themselves. Faithfulness might
be called the inertia of the soul. It keeps the soul on the path
on which it started, even after the original occasion that led it
onto it no longer exists.^

It is a fact of the greatest sociological importance that in-
numerable relationships preserve their sociological structure
unchanged, even after the feeling or practical occasion, which
originally gave rise to them, has ended. That destruction is easier
than construction, is not unqualifiedly true of certain human
relations, however indubitable it is otherwise. The rise of a
relationship, to be sure, requires certain positive and negative
conditions, and the absence of even one of them may, at once,
preclude its development. Yet once started, it is by no means
always destroyed by the subsequent disappearance of that con-
dition which, earlier, it could not have overcome. An erotic
relation, for instance, begun on the basis of physical beauty,
may well survive the decline of this beauty and its change into
ugliness. What has been said of states — that they are maintained
only by the means by which they were founded — is only a very
incomplete truth, and anything but an all-pervasive principle
of sociation generally. Sociological connectedness, no matter
what its origin, develops a self-preservation and autonomous

1 It goes without saying that I always speak here of faithfulness only as a purely
psychic disposition operating from “inside out," not as behavior such as marital
faithfulness in the legal sense, for instance, which refers to nothing positive at all,
but only to the non-occurrence of unfaithfulness.

Faithfulness and Gratitude 381

existence of its form that are independent of its initially con-
necting motives. Without this inertia of existing sociations, so-
ciety as a whole would constantly collapse, or change in an
unimaginable fashion.

The preservation of social units is psychologically sustained
by many factors, intellectual and practical, positive and negative.
Faithfulness is the affective factor among them; or better, faith-
fulness in the form of feeling, in its projection upon the plane
of feeling, is this affective factor. The quality of this feeling
will be ascertained here only in its psychic reality, whether or
not one accepts it as an adequate definition of the idea of faith-
fulness. Every beginning relationship is accompanied by a
specific feeling, interest, impulse, directed toward it by its par-
ticipants. If the relation continues, there develops a particular
feeling in interaction with this continuance — or, better, often,
though not always, the original psychic states change into a
particular form which we call faithfulness. It is a psychological
reservoir, as it were, an over-all or unitary mold for the most
varied interests, affects, and motives of reciprocal bonds. In spite
of all variety of origin, the original psychic states attain, in the
form of faithfulness, a certain similarity, which understandably
promotes the permanence of faithfulness itself. In other words,
the discussion here does not concern so-called “faithful love,“
“faithful attachment,” etc., which refer to certain modes or
temporal quantities of feelings already defined: what I mean
is that faithfulness itself is a specific psychic state, which is
directed toward the continuance of the relation as such, inde-
pendently of any particular affective or volitional elements that
sustain the content of this relation. This psychic state of the
individual is one of the a priori conditions of society which alone
make society possible (at least as we know it), in spite of the
extraordinary differences of degree in which this psychic state
exists. It can probably never reach zero: the absolutely unfaith-
ful person — the person for whom it is impossible to transform
feelings that engender relationships into the feeling designed
to preserve the relationship — is not a thinkable phenomenon.

Faithfulness, thus, might be called “induction by feeling.”
At such and such a moment a relation existed. In formal anal-
ogy to theoretical induction, feeling concludes that, therefore,

382 Faithfulness and Gratitude

the relation also exists at a later moment. And, just as in intel-
lectual induction, the later instance need no longer be ascer-
tained as fact, so to speak (because induction precisely means
that we may do without this ascertainment), so here, very often,
the later moment no longer shows a real feeling or interest, but
only the inductively developed state called faithfulness. In the
consideration of a great many relations and connections among
men, one must count with the fact (a fundamental sociological
fact) that mere habitual togetherness, the mere existence of
a relation over a period of time, produces this induction by
feeling.

This broadens the concept of faithfulness by adding a very
important element. The external sociological situation of to-
getherness appropriates the particular feelings that properly
correspond to it, as it were, even though they did not justify
the beginnings of the relationship. In a certain sense, the process
of faithfulness here runs backward. The psychical motives which
produced the relation allow the specific feeling of faithfulness
toward this relation to develop, or they transform themselves
into this feeling. Although the relationship may have been
brought about for external reasons (or at best, for intimate ones
that are extrinsic to its meaning), it nevertheless develops its
own faithfulness which, in turn, gives rise to deeper and more
adequate feeling states: the relation is legitimated, so to speak,
per subsequens matrimonium animarum [through the subse-
quent marriage of the souls].

The banal wisdom one often hears in reference to marriages
that were concluded on conventional or other external grounds
— that love will come later, during the marriage — is sometimes
actually quite apt. For once the existence of the relationship has
found its psychological correlate, faithfulness, then faithfulness
is followed, eventually, also by the feelings, affective interests,
and inner bonds that properly belong to the relationship. Only,
instead of appearing at the beginning, as we should “logically”
expect, they reveal themselves as its end product. But this de-
velopment cannot come to pass without the mediation of faith-
fulness, of the affect which is directed toward the preservation
of the relationship as such. In psychological association in gen-
eral, once imagination B is tied to imagination A, there also

Faithfulness and Gratitude 383

develops the opposite effect: A is called into consciousness
wherever B is. Analogously, the sociological form of a given
relationship produces, in the manner indicated, the inner state
of feeling that corresponds to it, although ordinarily the process
runs in the opposite direction.

An example will illustrate this. In order to restrict, as much
as possible, the exposing of children and their being given over
to foundlings* homes, France introduced, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, the *'secours temporaires” that is, fairly
adequate subsidies for unmarried mothers who kept their chil-
dren under their own care. On the basis of abundant observa-
tional material, the originators of this measure pointed out in
favor of it that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, once
the mother could be persuaded to keep the child for any length
of time, there was no danger any longer of her giving it up. The
natural emotional tie between mother and child should make
her wish to keep it, but obviously does not always. Yet, if she can
be swayed to do so even for a while, if only for external reasons,
to secure the advantage of that temporary subsidy, this external
relationship creates its own emotional underpinning.

These psychological constellations appear especially inten-
sified in the^ phenomenon of the renegade. He exhibits a char-
acteristic loyalty to his new political, religious, or other party.
The awareness and firmness of this loyalty (other things being
equal) surpass those of persons who have belonged to the party
all along. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Turkey, this
went so far that very often bom Turks were not allowed to
occupy high government positions, which were filled only by
Janizaries, that is, born Christians, either voluntarily converted
to Islam or stolen from their parents as children and brought
up as Turks. They were the most loyal and energetic subjects.
The special loyalty of the renegade seems to me to rest on the
fact that the circumstances, under which he enters the new
relationship, have a longer and more enduring effect than if he
had naively grown into it, so to speak, without breaking with a
previous one.

As far as it concerns us here, faithfulness or loyalty is the
emotional reflection of the autonomous life of the relation,
unperturbed by the possible disappearance of the motives which

384 Faithfulness and Gratitude

originally engendered the relation. But the longer these motives
survive, and the less seriously the power of pure form alone (of
the relationship itself) is put to test, the more energetic and
certain is the effect of faithfulness. This is particularly true of
the renegade because of his sharp awareness that he cannot go
back; the old relationship, with which he has irrevocably
broken, remains for him, who has a sort of heightened dis-
criminatory sensitivity, the background of the relation now
existing. It is as if he were repelled by the old relationship and
pushed into the new one, over and over again. Renegade loyalty
is so strong because it includes what loyalty in general can dis-
pense with, namely, the conscious continuance of the motives
of the relationship. This continuance here fuses more perma-
nently with the formal power of the relationship itself than in
cases without contrasting past and without absence of alterna-
tive paths, of return, or in other directions.

The very conceptual structure of faithfulness shows that it
is a sociological, or (if one will) a sociologically oriented, feeling.
Other feelings, no matter how much they may tie person to
person, have yet something more solipsistic. After all, even love,
friendship, patriotism, or the sense of social duty, essentially
occur and endure in the individual himself, immanently — as is
perhaps revealed most strikingly in Philine's question: ‘‘In
what way does it concern you that I love you?’' In spite of their
extraordinary sociological significance, these feelings remain,
above all, subjective states. To be sure, they are engendered only
by the intervention of other individuals or groups, but they do
so even before the intervention has changed into interaction.
Even where they are directed toward other individuals^ the
relation to these individuals is, at least not necessarily, their true
presupposition or content.

But precisely this is the meaning of faithfulness — at least as
here discussed, although linguistic usage also gives it other mean-
ings. Faithfulness refers to the peculiar feeling which is not
directed toward the possession of the other as the possessor’s
eudaemonistic good, nor toward the other’s welfare as an ex-
trinsic, objective value, but toward the preservation of the rela-
tionship to the other. It does not engender this relationship;
therefore, unlike these other affects, it cannot be pre-sociological;

Faithfulness and Gratitude 385

it pervades the relation once it exists and, as its inner self-
preservation, makes the individuals-in-relation hold fast to one
another. This specific sociological character is connected with
the fact that faithfulness, more than other feelings, is accessible
to our moral intentions. Other feelings overcome us like sun-
shine or rain, and their coming and going cannot be controlled
by our will. But unfaithfulness entails a more severe reproach
than does absence of love or social responsibility, beyond their
merely obligatory manifestations.

Moreover, its particular sociological significance makes
faithfulness play a unifying role in connection with a basic
dualism that pervades the fundamental form of all sociation.
The dualism consists in the fact that a relation, which is a
fluctuating, constantly developing life-process, nevertheless re-
ceives a relatively stable external form. The sociological forms
of reciprocal behavior, of unification, of presentation toward
the outside, cannot follow, with any precise adaptation, the
changes of their inside, that is, of the processes that occur in the
individual in regard to the other. These two layers, relation and
form, have different tempi of development; or it often is the
nature of the external form not to develop properly at all.

Evidently, the strongest external measure for fixing inter-
nally variable relations is law. Examples are the marital form,
which unyieldingly confronts changes in personal relationship;
the contract between two associates, which continues to divide
business profit evenly between them, although one of them does
all the work, and the other none; membership in an urban or
religious community that has become completely alien or anti-
pathetic to the member. But even beyond these obvious cases,
inter-individual as well as inter-group relations, which have
hardly begun, can constantly be observed to have an immediate
tendency toward solidifying their form. The form thus comes
to constitute a more or less rigid handicap for the relation in
its further course, while the form itself is incapable of adapting
to the vibrating life and the more or less profound changes of
this concrete, reciprocal relation.

But this is only the repetition of a discrepancy within the
individual himself. Our inner life, which we perceive as a
stream, as an incessant process, as an up and down of thoughts

386 Faithfulness and Gratitude

and moods, becomes crystallized, even for ourselves, in formulas
and fixed directions often merely by the fact that we verbalize
this life. Even if this leads only rarely to specific inadequacies;
even if, in fortunate cases, the fixed external form constitutes
the center of gravity or indifference above and below which our
life evenly oscillates; there still remains the fundamental, formal
contrast between the essential flux and movement of the sub-
jective psychic life and the limitations of its forms. These forms,
after all, do not express or shape an ideal, a contrast with life’s
reality, but this life itself.

Whether they are the forms of individual or social life, they
do not flow like our inner development does, but always remain
fixed over a certain period of time. For this reason, it is their
nature sometimes to be ahead of the inner reality and sometimes
to lag behind it. More specifically, when the life, which pulsates
beneath outlived forms, breaks these forms, it swings into the
opposite extreme, so to speak, and creates forms ahead of itself,
forms which are not yet completely filled out by it. To take an
instance from the field of personal relations: among friends, the
Sie [polite form of address] is often felt to be a stiffness that is
incommensurate with the warmth of the relation; but when it
finally comes to the Du [intimate form of address], this too, at
least in the beginning, strikes them just as often as something
slightly “too much,” as the anticipation of full intimacy which
has yet to be achieved. Another example is the change of a
political constitution, by which obsolete forms that have become
unbearably oppressive are replaced by freer and larger ones,
while the reality of the political and economic forces is not
always ripe for them; an overly narrow frame is replaced by one
which, for the time being, is still too wide.

In regard to these conditions of social life, faithfulness (in
the sense discussed) has the significance that, by virtue of it,
for once the personal, fluctuating inner life actually adopts the
character of the fixed, stable form of a relation. Or vice versa:
this sociological fixity, which remains outside life’s immediacy
and subjective rhythm, here actually becomes the content of
subjective, emotionally determined life. Irrespective of the
innumerable modifications, deflections, intermixtures of con-
crete destinies, faithfulness bridges and reconciles that deep and

Faithfulness and Gratitude 387

essential dualism which splits off the life-form of individual
intemality [Innerlichkeit] from the life-form of sociation that is
nevertheless borne by it. Faithfulness is that constitution of the
soul (which is constantly moved and lives in a continuous flux),
by means of which it fully incorporates into itself the stability
of the super-individual form of relation and by means of which
it admits to life, as the meaning and value of life, a content
which, though created by the soul itself, is, in its form, neverthe-
less bound to contradict the rhythm or un-rhythm of life as
actually lived.

Although in the feeling called gratitude the sociological char-
acter emerges much less directly, its sociological importance
can hardly be overestimated. Only the external insignificance
of its concrete acts — ^which contrasts, however, with the immense
sphere of its application — has thus far apparently concealed the
circumstance that the life and the cohesion of society would be
unforeseeably changed without this phenomenon.

Gratitude, in the first place, supplements the legal order.
All contacts among men rest on the schema of giving and return-
ing the equivalence. The equivalence of innumerable gifts and
performances can be enforced. In all economic exchanges in
legal form, in all fixed agreements concerning a given service,
in all obligations of legalized relations, the legal constitution
enforces and guarantees the reciprocity of service and return
service — social equilibrium and cohesion do not exist without
it. But there also are innumerable other relations, to which the
legal form does not apply, and in which the enforcement of the
equivalence is out of the question. Here gratitude appears as a
supplement. It establishes the bond of interaction, of the reci-
procity of service and return service, even where they are not
guaranteed by external coercion. Gratitude is, thus, a supple-
mentation of the legal form in the same sense that I showed
honor to be.^

In order to appraise the specific nature of this connection
correctly, it is necessary (above all) to realize that personal action

2 On pp. 403-406 of the same chapter of Soziologie from which the present
**Exkurs*’ is taken (VIII, **Die Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe/* The Self-
Preservation of the Social Group). The chapter itself is not included in this
volume. — Tr.

388 Faithfulness and Gratitude

among men by means of things — ^as, for instance, in robbery and
gift, the primitive forms of property exchange — becomes ob-
jectified in exchange. Exchange is the objectification of human
interaction. If an individual gives a thing, and another returns
one of the same value, the purely spontaneous character [Seelen-
haftigkeit] of their relation has become projected into objects.
This objectification, this growth of the relationship into self-
contained, movable things, becomes so complete that, in the fully
developed economy, personal interaction recedes altogether into
the background, while goods gain a life of their own. Relations
and value balances between them occur automatically, by mere
computation: men act only as the executors of the tendencies
toward shifts and equilibriums that are inherent in the goods
themselves. The objectively equal is given for the objectively
equal, and man himself is really irrelevant, although it goes with-
out saying that he engages in the process for his own interest.
The relation among men has become a relation among objects.

Gratitude likewise originates from interaction, and in inter-
action, between men. But it does so in the same manner, toward
the inside, as the relation of things originates from it, toward the
outside. While interaction is lifted out of the spontaneous act of
correlation through the exchange of things, this act in its conse-
quences, subjective meanings, and psychic echoes, sinks into the
soul through gratitude. Gratitude, as it were, is the moral
memory of mankind. In this respect, it differs from faithfulness
by being more practical and impulsive: although it may remain,
of course, something purely internal, it may yet engender new
actions. It is an ideal bridge which the soul comes across again
and again, so to speak, and which, upon provocations too slight
to throw a new bridge to the other person, it uses to come closer
to him.

Beyond its first origin, all sociation rests on a relationship’s
effect which survives the emergence of the relationship. An ac-
tion between men may be engendered by love or greed of gain,
obedience or hatred, sociability or lust for domination alone,
but this action usually does not exhaust the creative mood which,
on the contrary, somehow lives on in the sociological situation
it has produced. Gratitude is definitely such a continuance. It is
an ideal living-on of a relation which may have ended long ago,

Faithfulness and Gratitude 389

and with it, the act of giving and receiving. Although it is a
purely personal affect, or (if one will) a lyrical affect, its thous-
andfold ramifications throughout society make it one of the
most powerful means of social cohesion. It is a fertile emotional
soil which grows concrete actions among particular individuals.
But much more: although we are often unaware of its funda-
mentally important existence, and although it is interwoven
with innumerable other motivations, nevertheless, it gives
human actions a unique modification or intensity: it connects
them with what has gone before, it enriches them with the
element of personality, it gives them the continuity of inter-
actional life. If every grateful action, which lingers on from good
turns received in the past, were suddenly eliminated, society (at
least as we know it) would break apart.^

All external and internal motives that bind individuals to-
gether may be examined with respect to their implementation
of the exchange which not only holds society together once it
is formed but, in large measure, forms it. From such an exami-
nation, gratitude emerges as the motive which, for inner reasons,
effects the return of a benefit where there is no external neces-
sity for it. But ''benefit'' is not limited to a person's giving things
to another: we also thank the artist or poet who does not even
know us. This fact creates innumerable connections, ideal and
concrete, loose and firm, among those who are filled with grati-
tude toward the same giver. In fact, we do not thank somebody
only for what he does: the feeling with which we often react to
the mere existence of a person, must itself be designated as
gratitude. We are grateful to him only because he exists, because
w^e experience him. Often the subtlest as well as firmest bonds
among men develop from this feeling. It is independent of any

8 Giving, itself, is one of the strongest sociological functions. Without constant
giving and taking within society — outside of exchange, too — society would not
come about. For, giving is by no means only a simple effect that one individual has
upon another; it is precisely what is required of all sociological functions, namely,
interaction. By either accepting or rejecting the gift, the receiver has a highly
specific effect upon the giver. The manner of his acceptance, gratefully or ungrate-
fully, having expected the gift or being surprised by it, being satisfied or dis-
satisfied, elevated or humiliated — all this keenly acts back upon the giver, although
it can, of course, not be expressed in definite concepts and measures. Every act
of giving is, thus, an interaction between giver and receiver.

390 Faithfulness and Gratitude

particular act of receiving; it offers our whole personality to the
other, as if from a duty of gratitude to his total personality.

The concrete content of gratitude, that is, of the responses
it induces, calls forth modifications of interaction whose delicacy
does not lessen their significance for the structure of our rela-
tionships. The intimate character of these relations receives an
extraordinary wealth of nuances when the psychological situa-
tion makes it necessary for a gift received to be returned with a
gift of an essentially different kind. Thus an individual, per-
haps, gives “spirit,” that is, intellectual values, while the other
shows his gratitude by returning affective values. Another offers
the aesthetic charms of his personality, for instance, and the
receiver, who happens to be the stronger nature, compensates
him for it by injecting will power into him, as it were, or firm-
ness and resoluteness. There is, probably, not a single interac-
tion in which the things that go back and forth, in the reci-
procity of giving and taking, are exactly equal, although the
examples given are extreme intensifications of this inevitable
difference between gifts and return gifts among men.

If this difference is striking and is accompanied by its own
awareness, it constitutes a problem for what might be called
“inner sociology,” a problem which is equally difficult ethically
and theoretically. For, when an individual offers his intellectual
possessions, but is not very emotionally involved in the relation,
while the other can return nothing but his love, there often is a
slight note of inner incommensurateness; in fact, for our feel-
ings, all cases of this sort have something fatal; they somehow
resemble a purchase. Purchase — and this distinguishes it from
exchange in general — implies that the exchange, which actually
takes place under its name, concerns two entirely heterogeneous
things that can be juxtaposed and compared only by means of
a common monetary value. Thus, if earlier, prior to the use of
metal money, some handiwork was purchased with a cow or
goat, these wholly heterogeneous things were juxtaposed and
became exchangeable by virtue of the economic, abstract-gen-
eral value contained in each of them.

This hetert^eneity reaches its peak in modern money
economy. Because money expresses the general element con-
tained in all exchangeable objects, that is, their exchange value.

Faithfulness and Gratitude 391

it is incapable of expressing the individual element in them.
Therefore, objects insofar as they figure as salable things, become
degraded: the individual in them is leveled down to the general
which is shared by everything salable, particularly by money
itself. Something of this basic heterogeneity occurs in the cases
I mentioned. Two individuals offer one another different parts
of their inner lives. Gratitude for the gift is realized in a different
coin, as it were, and thus injects something of thfe character of
purchase into the exchange, which is inappropriate in principle.
One buys love with what one gives of spirit. One buys the
charm of a person one wants to enjoy, and pays for it with one’s
superior power of suggestion or will, which the other either
wishes to feel over himself or by which he allows himself to be
inspired.

This feeling of a certain inadequacy or indignity, however,
arises only if the reciprocal offerings appear as isolated objects
of exchange, if the mutual gratitude concerns only the benefits,
the exchanged contents themselves, so to speak. But man is not
the merchant of himself; and particularly not in the relation-
ships discussed here. His qualities, the powers and functions
which emanate from him, do not simply lie before him like
merchandise on a counter. It is most important to realize that,
even if an individual gives only a particular item, offers only
one side of his personality, he may yet wholly be in this side,
may yet give his personality completely in the form of this
single energy, or attribute, as Spinoza would say. This dispro-
portion appears only if the relation has become differentiated
to a point where the gift is severed from the giver’s total per-
sonality. If this is not so, however, it is precisely in these cases
that a wonderfully pure instance of a phenomenon emerges
which is, otherwise, not very frequent: of gratitude as the reac-
tion equally to the benefit and to the benefactor. Man’s plastic-
ity allows him both to offer and to accept, by means of the
apparently objective response to the gift which consists in
another gift, all of the subjectivity of gift and giver.

The most profound instance of this kind occurs when the
whole inner mood, which is oriented toward the other person
in the particular manner called gratitude, is more than an
enlarged projection (as it were) of the actually well-defined

392 Faithfulness and Gratitude

reaction of thankfulness upon our total psychic disposition: but
when, instead, the goods and other obligations we receive from
the other, merely strike us as an occasion upon which our rela-
tion to him, predetermined as it is in our inner nature, is
realized. What we usually call gratitude and what has given
this feeling its name in terms of single benefits, here goes much
below the ordinary form of thanks for gifts. One might say that
here gratitude actually consists, not in the return of a gift, but
in the consciousness that it cannot be returned, that there is
something which places the receiver into a certain permanent
position with respect to the giver, and makes him dimly en-
visage the inner infinity of a relation that can neither be ex-
hausted nor realized by any finite return gift or other activity.

This touches upon a further deep-lying incommensurability,
which is an essential characteristic of the relationships subsumed
under the category of gratitude. Once we have received some-
thing good from another person, once he has preceded us with
his action Y'vorgeleisteF'^y we no longer can make up for it
completely, no matter how much our own return gift or service
may objectively or legally surpass his own. The reason is that
his gift, because it was first, has a voluntary character ‘which no
return gift can have. For, to return the benefit we are obliged
ethically; we operate under a coercion which, though neither
social nor legal but moral, is still a coercion. The first gift is
given in full spontaneity; it has a freedom without any duty,
even without the duty of gratitude. By his bold identification
of doing one’s duty with freedom, Kant ruled this character of
duty out of court, but thereby confused the negative side of
freedom with its positive side. We are apparently free to do or
not to do the duty we feel above us as an ideal; but, actually,
complete freedom exists only in regard to not doing it, since to
do it follows from a psychic imperative, from a coercion which
is the inner equivalent of the legal coercion of society. Complete
freedom does not lie on the side of doing, but only on that of
not-doing, for, to do I am obligated because it is a duty — I am
caused to return a gift, for instance, by the mere fact that I
received it. Only when we give first are we free, and this is the
reason why, in the first gift, which is not occasioned by any
gratitude, there lies a beauty, a spontaneous devotion to the

Faithfulness and Gratitude 395

other, an opening up and flowering from the “virgin soil” of
the soul, as it were, which cannot be matched by any subsequent
gift, no matter how superior its content. The difference involved
here finds expression in the feeling (apparently often unjustified
in regard to the concrete content of the gift) that we cannot
return a gift; for it has a freedom which the return gift, because
it is thatj cannot possibly possess.

This, perhaps, is the reason why some people do not like to
accept, and try to avoid as much as possible being given gifts.
Their attitude would be ununderstandable if gift and gratitude
concerned objects only: for, merely by returning the gift, every-
thing could be balanced and the inner obligation redeemed.
Actually, however, these people act on the instinct, perhaps, that
the return gift cannot possibly contain the decisive element of
the original, namely, freedom; and that, in accepting it, there-
fore, they would contract an irredeemable obligation.^ As a rule,
such people have a strong impulse to independence and indi-
viduality; and this suggests that the condition of gratitude easily
has a taste of bondage, that it is a moral character indelebilis
[inextinguishable element]. A service, a sacrifice, a benefit, once
accepted, may engender an inner relation which can never be
eliminated completely, because gratitude is perhaps the only
feeling which, under all circumstances, can be morally de-
manded and rendered. If by itself or in response to some external
reality, our inner life has made it impossible for us to continue
loving, revering, esteeming a person (aesthetically or ethically
or intellectually) , we can still be grateful to him, since he once
gained our gratitude. To this demand we are (or could be) un-
conditionally subject: in regard to no fault of feeling is an
unmitigated sentence as appropriate as in regard to ingratitude.

Even intimate faithfulness is more remissible. There are rela-
tionships which, from their very beginning, operate only with
a limited capital of feeling (so to speak) and, after a time, inevit-
ably use it up. Thus their termination does not involve any
unfaithfulness, properly speaking. In their initial stages, how-

*This, of course, is an extreme statement, but its remoteness from reality is
inevitable in analyses which try to isolate, and thus make visible, elements of
phychic reality that actually are mixed in a thousand ways, are constantly de-
flected, and exist almost exclusively in embryonic forms.

394 Faithfulness and Gratitude

ever, it is difficult to distinguish these from other relations,
which (continuing the metaphor) live off interest only and in
which no passionate and unreserved giving makes inroads into
the capital. It is certainly one of the most common errors of
man to think that something which actually is capital is only
interest, and, for this reason, so to construct a relationship that
its breach does become an act of unfaithfulness. But this act is
not then a delinquency committed in full freedom, but only
the logical outcome of a development based all along on errone-
ous factors. Nor does unfaithfulness appear any more avoidable
where not the discovery of a mistake, but an actual change in
the individuals, alters the presuppositions of their relationship.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of human conditions springs from
(among other things) the utterly unrationalizable and constantly
shifting mixture of the stable and variable elements of our
nature. Even when we have entered a binding relationship with
our whole being, we may yet remain in the same mood and
inclination as before with some of our aspects — perhaps with
those that are turned outward, but possibly even with some
internal ones. But other aspects develop into entirely new in-
terests, aims, capacities, and thus come to throw our total exis-
tence into new directions. In doing so, they turn us away from
earlier conditions ® with a sort of unfaithfulness, which is neither
quite innocent, since there still exist some bonds which must
now be broken, nor quite guilty, since wfe are no longer the
persons we were when we entered the relationship; the subject
to whom the unfaithfulness could be imputed has disappeared.

When our feeling of gratitude gives out, our sentiments
admit of no such exoneration on inner grounds. For, gratitude
seems to reside in a point in us which we do not allow to change;
of which we demand constancy with more right, than we do of
more passionate, even of deeper, feelings. Gratitude is pecu-
liarly irredeemable. It maintains its claim even after an equal
or greater return gift has been made, and it may, in fact, claim
both parties to the relation, the first and the second giver (a
possibility which is indirectly due, perhaps, to that freedom of
the initial gift which is missing in the return gift with only its

» By conditions, of course, only purely internal ones are understood here, not
those of external duty.

Faithfulness and Gratitude 895

moral necessity) . This irredeemable nature of gratitude shows
it as a bond between men which is as subtle as it is firm. Every
human relationship of any duration produces a thousand occa-
sions for it, and even the most ephemeral ones do not allow their
increment to the reciprocal obligation to be lost. In fortunate
cases, but sometimes even in cases abundantly provided with
counter-instances, the sum of these increments produces an
atmosphere of generalized obligation (the saying that one is
“obliged” [“verbunden”] to somebody who has earned our
thanks is quite apt), which can be redeemed by no accomplish-
ments whatever. This atmosphere of obligation belongs among
those “microscopic,” but infinitely tough, threads which tie one
element of society to another, and thus eventually all of them
together in a stable collective life.

Chapter 2

The Negative Character
of Collective Behavior

THE RESULT OF [COLLEC-

tive] phenomena is achieved, in several respects, only through
negation. More precisely, often they develop their negative
character as the groups, which are their instruments, increase in
size. In mass actions, individual motives are frequently so differ-
ent that their unification is the more easily possible, the more
their content is merely negative, even destructive. The discon-
tent that leads to great revolutions always feeds on so many,
often contradictory, sources, that their unification in favor of a
positive goal is impossible. The construction of this positive
goal, therefore, is usually the task of smaller groups and of in-
numerable individual contributions of divergent forces which,
if unified in mass action, would have only dispersing and de-
structive consequences. In this respect, one of the greatest his-
torians said that the multitude is always ungrateful because,
even if the whole is brought to flourish, the single individual
nevertheless feels, above all, what he still lacks personally. The
heterogeneity of individuals, which leaves negation ® as the only
common denominator, is shown very clearly, for instance, in
earlier Russian revolutionism. The immense space, the cultural
differences, the number of varying aims that dominated the
movement, actually made nihilism, the mere annihihtion of
whatever was at issue, the correct name for the features common
to all of its elements.

The same trait emerges in the results of great plebiscites
which, so often and almost ununderstandably, are negative. In

« This must be taken, of course, with a grain of salt; it does not consider at all
what society does to overcome this particular fate of its forces.

396

The Negative Character of Collective Behavior 397

Switzerland, in 1900, for instance, a referendum simply rejected
a federal sickness and accident insurance bill, which had been
passed unanimously by both popular representations^ the Na-
tional Council and the Council of States; and this, also, was the
fate of most other bills subjected to the referendum. Negation
is after all simplest; and, for this reason, the elements of a mass
can agree on it where they can reach no consent concerning a
positive aim. The various groups which rejected the law on the
basis of very different standpoints — particularlistic, ultramon-
tane, agrarian, capitalistic, technical, party-political — could only
have negation in common.

For the same reason, however, the sharing of, at least, nega-
tive characteristics by many small groups may suggest or prepare
their unity. Thus it has been pointed out that the Greeks showed
great cultural differences among one another, but that both
Arcadians and Athenians, as compared with contemporary Car-
thaginians, Egyptians, Persians, or Thracians, nevertheless had
many negative common features: nowhere in historical Greece
were there human sacrifices, intentional mutilations, polygamy,
the sale of children into slavery, or unlimited obedience to an
individual. In spite of all positive differences, this commonness
of the merely negative was bound to make all Greeks conscious
of belonging to a culture that transcended the individual Greek
state.

The negative character of the bond that unifies the large
group is revealed, above all, in its norms. It should be remem-
bered that obligatory rules of every sort must be the simpler and
the less voluminous (other things being equal), the larger the
sphere of their application. There are much fewer rules of
international courtesy, for instance, than there are courtesy rules
which have to be observed within every smaller circle; or, the
larger the states of the German Reich, the briefer, usually, are
their constitutions. To put it in the form of a principle: as the
size of the group increases, the common features that fuse its
members into a social unit become ever fewer. For this reason
(although at first glance it sounds paradoxical), a smaller mini-
mum of norms can, at least, hold together a large group more
easily than a small one. Qualitatively speaking, the larger the
group is, usually the more prohibitive and restrictive the kinds

398 The Negative Character of Collective Behavior

oi conduct which it must demand of its participants in order to
maintain itself: the positive ties, which connect individual with
individual and give the life of the group its real content, must
(after all) be given over to these individuals^ The variety of
persons, interests, events becomes too large to be regulated by a
center; the center is left only with a prohibitive function, with
the determination of what must not be done under any circum-
stances, with the restriction of freedom, rather than its direction.
All this, of course, merely indicates the trend of a development
which is always crossed and deflected by other tendencies.

The same problems arise in connection with the unification
of a number of groups with divergent religious feelings or
interests. Allah emerged as the general idea of God as such, so
to speak, out of the decay of Arab polytheism. Polytheism neces-
sarily engenders a split among its adherents since, according to
their different tendencies (internal as well as practical), they
espouse the various gods in different ways. Initially, therefore,
Allah’s abstract and unifying character was negative: its original
nature was “to hold men back from evil,” not to urge them to
do good — he was only the “restrainer.” Although, in compari-
son with all dispersing polytheisms and a-social monisms (as in
India), the Hebrew God effected or expressed a consistency of
the religio-social content unheard of in antiquity, he, too, de-
livered his most emphatic practical norms in the form of “Thou
shalt not.’’

In Germany, the positive life relations underlying civil law
were unified in the Civil Code only some thirty years after the
Reich was founded, whereas the Criminal Code, with its negative
rules, has been uniformly in force ever since 1872. The par-
ticular circumstance which makes prohibitions especially well
suited for expanding smaller groups into large ones, is that the

7 For this reason an English proverb says: “The business of everybody is the
business of nobody." The peculiar fact that actions become negative once a
plurality engages in them, is also shown in the motive in terms of which an
attempt has been made at explaining the forbearance and indolence, in regard to
public evils, of the (otherwise so energetic) North Americans. Public opinion
there, the explanation runs, is supposed to bring about everything. Hence the
fatalism which, “making each individual feel his insignificance, disposes him to
leave to the multitude the task of setting right what is every one else's business
just as much as his own/*

The Negative Character of Collective Behavior 399

opposite of prohibition is by no means always command, but
often only permission. Thus, when in group A, a must not occur,
but b and c are permitted; in B, not b, but a and c; and, in C,
not c, but a and 6, etc.; then the comprehensive structure com-
posed of A and B and C may well be founded upon the pro-
hibition of all the three a, b, and c. This unity, however, is
possible only if, in A, b and c are not commanded, but only
permitted, so that they also may not be done. If, instead, b and c
are as positively commanded as a is prohibited (and correspond-
ingly for B and C), a unity cannot be brought about, because,
in such a case, what is explicitly commanded in one group, is
explicitly prohibited in another.

This scheme is illustrated in the following example. Origi-
nally, every Egyptian was prohibited to eat of a particular
animal species, which was sacred to his district. Later, as the
result of the political fusion of a number of local cults into a
national religion which was headed by a priesthood reigning
throughout the nation, this developed into the doctrine that
holiness demands abstention from all flesh food. The unification
could be brought about only as the synthesis or generalization
of all the particular prohibitions: had the eating of all animals
permitted ‘(but not enjoined) in every district been a positive
command, evidently there would have been no possibility of
combining the particular rules of the various districts into a
more comprehensive unity.

The more general the norm and the larger the group in
which it prevails, the less does the observance of the norm char-
acterize the individual and the less important is it for him —
whereas its violation, on the whole, has consequences which are
especially grave, which single out the individual from his group.
This is quite obviously so, above all, in the intellectual field.
Theoretical communication [mutual understanding], without
which human society could not exist at all, rests on a small num-
ber of generally agreed-on norms, which we call the norms of
logic — although, of course, not everybody is conscious of them
in their abstractness. They constitute the minimum of what
must be acknowledged by all who want, in any way, to com-
municate with one another. On them rests the briefest agree-
ment between strangers and the common daily life of the closest

400 The Negative Character of Collective Behavior

persons. Thought would never coincide with empirical reality
without obeying these elementary norms: its adherence to them
is the most indispensable, the most general condition of all
sociological life. Logic, thus, cuts through the variety of world
views, profound and shallow, and creates a certain common
ground whose neglect would abolish all intellectual community
in every sense of the term.

Yet, if we look closely, we find that logic gives us no positive
possession at all: it is only a norm against which we must not
sin — ^while we derive no distinction, no specific good or quality,
from its observance. All attempts at gaining particular knowl-
edge by means of logic alone have failed; and its sociological
significance, therefore, is as negative as that of the criminal
code: in both cases, only the violation of the norm creates par-
ticular and exposed situations, while staying in the norm pro-
duces no more for the individual than the possibility of remain-
ing within (respectively) theoretical and practical generality.
To be sure, because of a thousand contentual divergences, intel-
lectual contact may not come forth even if logic is rigorously
observed; but, if it is violated, communication is bound to
fail — ^just as moral and social cohesion may collapse, for all
avoidance of the prohibitions in the criminal code, while it
must do so if its laws are disobeyed.

All this also applies to societal forms in the stricter sense,
insofar as they are general within a given group. In this case,
their observance is not characteristic of anybody, but their trans-
gression certainly is; the most general norms of a group merely
must not be transgressed, whereas (in the measure of their spe-
cialization) the particular norms, that hold smaller groups to
gether, positively give their members character and distinction.
On this situation rests the practical utility of social courtesy
forms, which are so empty. Even from their most punctilious
observance, we must not infer any positive existence of the
esteem and devotion they emphasize; but their slightest violation
is an unmistakable indication that these feelings do not exist.
Greeting somebody in the street proves no esteem whatever,
but failure to do so, conclusively proves the opposite. The forms
of courtesy fail as symbols of positive, inner attitudes, but they
are most useful in documenting negative ones, since even the

The Negative Character of Collective Behavior 401

slightest omission can radically and definitely alter our relation
to a person. And they both fail and succeed to the extent to
which they are general and conventional, that is, characteristic
of the large circle.

Chapter 3

The Stranger

IF WANDERING IS THE LIB-

eration from every given point in space, and thus the concep-
tional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form
of the “stranger” presents the unity, as it were, of these two
characteristics. This phenomenon too, however, reveals that
spatial relations are only the condition, on the one hand, and
the symbol, on the other, of human relations. The stranger is
thus being discussed here, not in the sense often touched upon
in the past, as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomor-
row, but rather as the person who comes today and stays to-
morrow. He is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although
he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom
of coming and going. He is fixed within a particular spatial
group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial
boundaries. But his position in this group is determined, essen-
tially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the be-
ginning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not and
cannot stem from the group itself.

The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every
human relation is organized, in the phenomenon of the stranger,
in a way which may be most briefly formulated by saying that
in the relationship to him, distance means that he, who is close
by, is far, and strangeness means that he, who also is far, is
actually near. For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive
relation; it is a specific form of interaction. The inhabitants
of Sirius are not really strangers to us, at least not in any socio-
logically relevant sense: they do not exist for us at all; they
are beyond far and near. The stranger, like the poor and like
sundry “inner enemies,” is an element of the group itself. His
position as a full-fledged member involves both being outside

402

The Stranger 403

it and confronting it. The following statements, which are by
no means intended as exhaustive, indicate how elements which
increase distance and repel, in the relations of and with the
stranger produce a pattern of coordination and consistent
interaction.

Throughout the history of economics the stranger every-
where appears as the trader, or the trader as stranger. As long
as economy is essentially self-sufficient, or products axe ex-
changed within a spatially narrow group, it needs no middle-
man: a trader is only required for products that originate out-
side the group. Insofar as members do not leave the circle in
order to buy these necessities — in which case they are the
''strange** merchants in that outside territory — the trader must
be a stranger, since nobody else has a chance to make a living.

This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he
settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it
again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can
live by intermediate trade. Once an economy is somehow closed,
the land is divided up, and handicrafts are established that
satisfy the deniand for them, the trader, too, can find his exist-
ence. For m trade, which alone makes possible unlimited com-
binations, intelligence always finds expansions and new terri-
tories, an achievement which is very difficult to attain for the
original producer with his lesser mobility and his dependence
upon a circle of customers that can be increased only slowly.
Trade can always absorb more people than primary production;
it is, therefore, the sphere indicated for the stranger, who in-
trudes as a supernumerary, so to speak, into a group in which
the economic positions are actually occupied — the classical
example is the history of European Jews. The stranger is by
nature no "owner of soil** — soil not only in the physical, but
also in the figurative sense of a life-substance which is fixed,
if not in a point in space, at least in an ideal point of the social
environment. Although in more intimate relations, he may
develop all kinds of charm and significance, as long as he is
considered a stranger in the eyes of the other, he is not an "owner
of soil.*' Restriction to intermediary trade, and often (as though
sublimated from it) to pure finance, gives him the specific char-
acter of mobility. If mobility takes place within a closed group,

404 The Stranger

it embodies that synthesis of nearness and distance which con-
stitutes the formal position of the stranger. For, the funda-
mentally mobile person comes in contact, at one time or another,
with every individual, but is not organically connected, through
established ties of kinship, locality, and occupation, with any
single one.

Another expression of this constellation lies in the objec-
tivity of the stranger. He is not radically committed to the
unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and
therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of ‘‘ob-
jectivity.*’ But objectivity does not simply involve passivity and
detachment; it is a particular structure composed of distance
and nearness, indifference and involvement. I refer to the dis-
cussion (in the chapter on “Super ordination and Subordina-
tion'*®) of the dominating positions of the person who is a
stranger in the group; its most typical instance was the practice
of those Italian cities to call their judges from the outside, be-
cause no native was free from entanglement in family and party
interests.

With the objectivity of the stranger is connected, also, the
phenomenon touched upon above,® although it is chiefly (but
not exclusively) true of the stranger who moves on. This is the
fact that he often receives the most surprising openness — confi-
dences which sometimes have the character of a confessional
and which would be carefully withheld from a more closely
related person. Objectivity is by no means non-participation
(which is altogether outside both subjective and objective inter-
action), but a positive and specific kind of participation — ^just
as the objectivity of a theoretical observation does not refer to
the mind as a passive tabula rasa on which things inscribe their
qualities, but on the contrary, to its full activity that operates
according to its own laws, and to the elimination, thereby, of
accidental dislocations and emphases, whose individual and
subjective differences would produce different pictures of the
same object.

8 Pp. 216-221 above. — Tr.

8 On pp. 500-502 of the same chapter from which the present *‘Exkurs** is taken
(IX, **T>er Raum und die rdumlichen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft/* Space and the
Spatial Organization of Society). The chapter itself is not included in this
volume. — ^Tr.

The Stranger 405

Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective
individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice
his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given. The
freedom, however, which allows the stranger to experience and
treat even his close relationships as though from a bird's-eye
view, contains many dangerous possibilities. In uprisings of all
sorts, the party attacked has claimed, from the beginning of
things, that provocation has come from the outside, through
emissaries and instigators. Insofar as this is true, it is an
exaggeration of the specific role of the stranger: he is freer,
practically and theoretically; he surveys conditions with less
prejudice; his criteria for them are more general and more ob-
jective ideals; he is not tied down in his action by habit, piety,
and precedent.^®

Finally, the proportion of nearness and remoteness which
gives the stranger the character of objectivity, also finds prac-
tical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation to
him. That is, with the stranger one has only certain more general
qualities in common, whereas the relation to more organically
connected persons is based on the commonness of specific differ-
ences from merely general features. In fact, all somehow per-
sonal relations follow this scheme in various patterns. They are
determined not only by the circumstance that certain common
features exist among the individuals, along with individual dif-
ferences, which either influence the relationship or remain out-
side of it. For, the common features themselves are basically
determined in their effect upon the relation by the question
whether they exist only between the participants in this particu-
lar relationship, and thus are quite general in regard to this
relation, but are specific and incomparable in regard to every-
thing outside of it — or whether the participants feel that these
features are common to them because they are common to a
group, a type, or mankind in general. In the case of the second
alternative, the effectiveness of the common features becomes

10 But where the attacked make the assertion falsely, they do so from the
tendency of those in higher position to exculpate inferiors, who, up to the rebel-
lion, have been in a consistently close relation with them. For, by creating the fic-
tion that the rebels were not really guilty, but only instigated, and that the rebel-
lion did not really start with them, they exonerate themselves, inasmuch as they
altogether deny all real grounds for the uprising.

406 The Stranger

diluted in proportion to the size of the group composed of
members who are similar in this sense. Although the common-
ness functions as their unifying basis, it does not make these
particular persons interdependent on one another, because it
could as easily connect everyone of them with all kinds of indi-
viduals other than the members of his group. This too, evi-
dently, is a way in which a relationship includes both nearness
and distance at the same time: to the extent to which the com-
mon features are general, they add, to the warmth of the
relation founded on them, an element of coolness, a feeling of
the contingency of precisely this relation — the connecting forces
have lost their specific and centripetal character.

In the relation to the stranger, it seems to me, this constella-
tion has an extraordinary and basic preponderance over the
individual elements that are exclusive with the particular rela-
tionship. The stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel between
him and ourselves common features of a national, social, occu-
pational, or generally human, nature. He is far from us, insofar
as these common features extend beyond him or us, and connect
us only because they connect a great many people.

A trace of strangeness in this sense easily enters even the
most intimate relationships. In the stage of first passion, erotic
relations strongly reject any thought of generalization: the
lovers think that there has never been a love like theirs; that
nothing can be compared either to the person loved or to the
feelings for that person. An estrangement — whether as cause
or as consequence it is difficult to decide — usually comes at the
moment when this feeling of uniqueness vanishes from the rela-
tionship. A certain skepticism in regard to its value, in itself
and for them, attaches to the very thought that in their relation,
after all, they carry out only a generally human destiny; that
they experience an experience that has occurred a thousand
times before; that, had they not accidentally met their particular
partner, they would have found the same significance in another
person.

Something of this feeling is probably not absent in any
relation, however close, because what is common to two is
never common to them alone, but is subsumed under a general
idea which includes much else besides, many possibilities of

The Stranger 407

commonness. No matter how little these possibilities become
real and how often we forget them, here and there, nevertheless,
they thrust themselves between us like shadows, like a mist
which escapes every word noted, but which must coagulate into
a solid bodily form before it can be called jealousy. In some
cases, perhaps the more general, at least the more unsurmount-
able, strangeness is not due to different and ununderstandable
matters. It is rather caused by the fact that similarity, harmony,
and nearness are accompanied by the feeling that they are not
really the unique property of this particular relationship: they
are something more general, something which potentially pre-
vails between the partners and an indeterminate number
of others, and therefore gives the relation, which alone was
realized, no inner and exclusive necessity.

On the other hand, there is a kind of “strangeness” that
rejects the very commonness based on something more general
which embraces the parties. The relation of the Greeks to the
Barbarians is perhaps typical here, as are all cases in which it
is precisely general attributes, felt to be specifically and purely
human, that are disallowed to the other. But “stranger,” here,
has no positive meaning; the relation to him is a non-relation;
he is not what is relevant here, a member of the group itself.

As a group member, rather, he is near and far at the same
time, as is characteristic of relations founded only on generally
human commonness. But between nearness and distance, there
arises a specific tension when the consciousness that only the
quite general is common, stresses that which is not common.
In the case of the person who is a stranger to the country, the
city, the race, etc., however, this non-common element is once
more nothing individual, but merely the strangeness of origin,
which is or could be common to many strangers. For this reason,
strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers
of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in
regard to them than the element of nearness.

This form is the basis of such a special case, for instance,
as the tax levied in Frankfort and elsewhere upon medieval
Jews. Whereas the Beede [tax] paid by the Christian citizen
changed with the changes of his fortune, it was fixed once for
all for every single Jew. This fixity rested on the fact that the

408 The Stranger

Jew had his social position as a Jew, not as the individual bearer
of certain objective contents. Every other citizen was the owner
of a particular amount of property, and his tax followed its
fluctuations. But the Jew as a taxpayer was, in the first place,
a Jew, and thus his tax situation had an invariable element.
This same position appears most strongly, of course, once even
these individual characterizations (limited though they were by
rigid invariance) are omitted, and all strangers pay an altogether
equal head-tax.

In spite of being inorganically appended to it, the stranger
is yet an organic member of the group. Its uniform life includes
the specific conditions of this element. Only we do not know
how to designate the peculiar unity of this position other than
by saying that it is composed of certain measures of nearness
and distance. Although some quantities of them characterize
all relationships, a special proportion and reciprocal tension
produce the particular, formal relation to the “stranger.”

Chapter 4

The Metropolis and Mental Life

THE DEEPEST PROBLEMS OF

modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve
the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of
overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external
culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature
which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains
in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth
century called upon man to free himself of all the historical
bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics.
Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should de-
velop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth
century demanded the functional specialization of man and his
work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable
to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest pos-
sible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the
more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of
all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual
conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; social-
ism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same
reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic
motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and
worn out by a social-technological mechanism. An inquiry into
the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products,
into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve
the equation which structures like the metropolis set up be-
tween the individual and the super-individual contents of life.
Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality
accommodates itself in the adjustments to external forces. This
will be my task today.

The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individ-

409

410 The Metropolis and Mental Life

uality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation
which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer
and inner stimuli. Man is a differentiating creature. His mind
is stimulated by the difference between a momentary impression
and the one which preceded it. Lasting impressions, impressions
which differ only slightly from one another, impressions which
take a regular and habitual course and show regular and habit-
ual contrasts — all these use up, so to speak, less consciousness
than does the rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp
discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpected-
ness of onrushing impressions. These are the psychological con-
ditions which the metropolis creates. With each crossing of the
street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupa-
tional and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small
town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations
of psychic life. The metropolis exacts from man as a discriminat-
ing creature a different amount of consciousness than does rural
life. Here the rhythm of life and sensory mental imagery flows
more slowly, more habitually, and more evenly. Precisely in
this connection the sophisticated character of metropolitan
psychic life becomes understandable — as over against small
town life which rests more upon deeply felt and emotional rela-
tionships. These latter are rooted in the more unconscious
layers of the psyche and grow most readily in the steady rhythm
of uninterrupted habituations. The intellect, however, has its
locus in the transparent, conscious, higher layers of the psyche;
it is the most adaptable of our inner forces. In order to accom-
modate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the in-
tellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is
only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind
could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events. Thus
the metropolitan type of man — ^which, of course, exists in a
thousand individual variants — develops an organ protecting
him against the threatening currents and discrepancies of his
external environment which would uproot him. He reacts with
his head instead of his heart. In this an increased awareness
assumes the psychic prerogative. Metropolitan life, thus, under-
lies a heightened awareness and a predominance of intelligence
in metropolitan man. The reaction to metropolitan phenomena

The Metropolis and Mental Life 411

is shifted to that organ which is least sensitive and quite remote
from the depth of the personality. Intellectuality is thus seen
to preserve subjective life against the overwhelming power of
metropolitan life, and intellectuality branches out in many di-
rections and is integrated with numerous discrete phenomena.

The metropolis has always been the seat of the money
economy. Here the multiplicity and concentration of economic
exchange gives an importance to the means of exchange which
the scantiness of rural commerce would not have allowed.
Money economy and the dominance of the intellect are intrin-
sically connected. They share a matter-of-fact attitude in dealing
with men and with things; and, in this attitude, a formal justice
is often coupled with an inconsiderate hardness. The intellec-
tually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine indi-
viduality, because relationships and reactions result from it
which cannot be exhausted with logical operations. In the same
manner, the individuality of phenomena is not commensurate
with the pecuniary principle. Money is concerned only with
what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value, it reduces
all quality and individuality to the question: How much? All
intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in
their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is
reckoned with like a number, like an element which is in itself
indifferent. Only the objective measurable achievement is of
interest. Thus metropolitan man reckons with his merchants
and customers, his domestic servants and often even with persons
with whom he is obliged to have social intercourse. These fea-
tures of intellectuality contrast with the nature of the small
circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individuality as
inevitably produces a warmer tone of behavior, a behavior which
is beyond a mere objective balancing of service and return.
In the sphere of the economic psychology of the small group
it is of importance that under primitive conditions production
serves the customer who orders the good, so that the producer
and the consumer are acquainted. The modem metropolis, how-
ever, is supplied almost entirely by production for the market,
that is, for entirely unknown purchasers who never personally
enter the producer’s actual field of vision. Through this
anonymity the interests of each party acquire an unmerciful

412 The Metropolis and Mental Life

matter-of-factness; and the intellectually calculating economic
egoisms of both parties need not fear any deflection because
of the imponderables of personal relationships. The money
economy dominates the metropolis; it has displaced the last
survivals of domestic production and the direct barter of goods;
it minimizes, from day to day, the amount of work ordered by
customers. The matter-of-fact attitude is obviously so intimately
interrelated with the money economy, which is dominant in
the metropolis, that nobody can say whether the intellectualistic
mentality first promoted the money economy or whether the
latter determined the former. The metropolitan way of life is
certainly the most fertile soil for this reciprocity, a point which
I shall document merely by citing the dictum of the most
eminent English constitutional historian: throughout the whole
course of English history, London has never acted as England’s
heart but often as England’s intellect and always as her
moneybagl

In certain seemingly insignificant traits, which lie upon the
surface of life, the same psychic currents characteristically unite.
Modem mind has become more and more calculating. The
calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy
has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science:
to transform the world into an arithmetic problem, to fix every
part of the world by mathematical formulas. Only money
economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing,
calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction
of qualitative values to quantitative ones. Through the calcula-
tive nature of money a new precision, a certainty in the defini-
tion of identities and differences, an unambiguousness in agree-
ments and arrangements has been brought about in the relations
of life-elements — ^just as externally this precision has been
effected by the universal diffusion of pocket watches. However,
the conditions of metropolitan life are at once cause and effect
of this trait. The relationships and affairs of the typical metro-
politan usually are so varied and complex that without the
strictest punctuality in promises and services the whole structure
would break down into an inextricable chaos. Above all, this
necessity is brought about by the aggregation of so many people
with such differentiated interests, who must integrate their rela-

The Metropolis and Mental Life 413

tions and activities into a highly complex organism. If all clocks
and watches in Berlin would suddenly go wrong in different
ways, even if only by one hour, all economic life and com-
munication of the city would be disrupted for a long time. In
addition an apparently mere external factor: long distances,
would make all waiting and broken appointments result in an
ill-afforded waste of time. Thus, the technique of metropolitan
life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of
all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal
time schedule. Here again the general conclusions of this entire
task of reflection become obvious, namely, that from each point
on the surface of existence — however closely attached to the sur-
face alone — one may drop a sounding into the depth of the
psyche so that all the most banal externalities of life finally are
connected with the ultimate decisions concerning the meaning
and style of life. Punctuality, calculability, exactness are forced
upon life by the complexity and extension of metropolitan
existence and are not only most intimately connected with its
money economy and intellectualistic character. These traits
must also color the contents of life and favor the exclusion of
those irrational, instinctive, sovereign traits and impulses which
aim at determining the mode of life from within, instead of
receiving the general and precisely schematized form of life
from without. Even though sovereign types of personality, char-
acterized by irrational impulses, are by no means impossible in
the city, they are, nevertheless, opposed to typical city life. The
passionate hatred of men like Ruskin and Nietzsche for the
metropolis is understandable in these terms. Their natures dis-
covered the value of life alone in the unschematized existence
which cannot be defined with precision for all alike. From the
same source of this hatred of the metropolis surged their hatred
of money economy and of the intellectualism of modern
existence.

The same factors which have thus coalesced into the exact-
ness and minute precision of the form of life have coalesced into
a structure of the highest impersonality; on the other hand, they
have promoted a highly personal subjectivity. There is perhaps
no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally
reserved to the metropolis as has the blas^ attitude. The blas6

414 The Metropolis and Mental Life

attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely com-
pressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves. From this, the
enhancement of metropolitan intellectuality, also, seems orig-
inally to stem. Therefore, stupid people who are not intellec-
tually alive in the first place usually are not exactly blas6. A life
in boundless pursuit of pleasure makes one blas6 because it
agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long
time that they finally cease to react at all. In the same way,
through the rapidity and contradictoriness of their changes,
more harmless impressions force such violent responses, tearing
the nerves so brutally hither and thither that their last reserves
of strength are spent; and if one remains in the same milieu
they have no time to gather new strength. An incapacity thus
emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy.
This constitutes that blas^ attitude which, in fact, every metro-
politan child shows when compared with children of quieter
and less changeable milieus.

This physiological source of the metropolitan blas6 attitude
is joined by another source which flows from the money
economy. The essence of the blas^ attitude consists in the blunt-
ing of discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are
not perceived, as is the case with the half-wit, but rather that
the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the
things themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear
to the blas^ person in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object
deserves preference over any other. This mood is the faithful
subjective reflection of the completely internalized money
economy. By being the equivalent to all the manifold things in
one and the same way, money becomes the most frightful leveler.
For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms
of '*how much?” Money, with all its colorlessness and indiffer-
ence, becomes the common denominator of all values; irrepar-
ably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their
specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with
equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money.
All things lie on the same level and differ from one another
only in the size of the area which they cover. In the individual
case this coloration, or rather discoloration, of things through
their money equivalence may be unnoticeably minute. How-

The Metropolis and Mental Life 415

ever, through the relations of the rich to the objects to be had
for money, perhaps even through the total character which the
mentality of the contemporary public everywhere imparts to
these objects, the exclusively pecuniary evaluation of objects
has become quite considerable. The large cities, the main seats
of the money exchange, bring the purchasability of things to
the fore much more impressively than do smaller localities. That
is why cities are also the genuine locale of the blas^ attitude.
In the blas^ attitude the concentration of men and things stimu-
late the nervous system of the individual to its highest achieve-
ment so that it attains its peak. Through the mere quantitative
intensification of the same conditioning factors this achieve-
ment is transformed into its opposite and appears in the peculiar
adjustment of the blas6 attitude. In this phenomenon the nerves
find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last possi-
bility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metro-
politan life. The self-preservation of certain personalities is
brought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world,
a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one’s own
personality down into a feeling of the same worthlessness.

Whereas^ the subject of this form of existence has to come
to terms with it entirely for himself, his self-preservation in the
face of the large city demands from him a no less negative be-
havior of a social nature. This mental attitude of metropolitans
toward one another we may designate, from a formal point of
view, as reserve. If so many inner reactions were responses to the
continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are
those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one
meets and where one has a positive relation to almost everyone,
one would be completely atomized internally and come to an un-
imaginable psychic state. Partly this psychological fact, partly the
right to distrust which men have in the face of the touch-and-go
elements of metropolitan life, necessitates our reserve. As a result
of this reserve we frequently do not even know by sight those
who have been our neighbors for years. And it is this reserve
which in the eyes of the small-town people makes us appear to
be cold and heartless. Indeed, if I do not deceive myself, the
inner aspect of this outer reserve is not only indifference but,
more often than we are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual

416 The Metropolis and Mental Life

strangeness and repulsion, which will break into hatred and
fight at the moment of a closer contact, however caused. The
whole inner organization of such an extensive communicative
life rests upon an extremely varied hierarchy of sympathies,
indifferences, and aversions of the briefest as well as of the most
permanent nature. The sphere of indifference in this hierarchy
is not as large as might appear on the surface. Our psychic
activity still responds to almost every impression of somebody
else with a somewhat distinct feeling. The unconscious, fluid
and changing character of this impression seems to result in a
state of indifference. Actually this indifference would be just
as unnatural as the diffusion of indiscriminate mutual sugges-
tion would be unbearable. From both these typical dangers of
the metropolis, indifference and indiscriminate suggestibility,
antipathy protects us. A latent antipathy and the preparatory
stage of practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions
without which this mode of life could not at all be led. The
extent and the mixture of this style of life, the rhythm of its
emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is satisfied —
all these, with the unifying motives in the narrower sense, form
the inseparable whole of the metropolitan style of life. What
appears in the metropolitan style of life directly as dissociation
is in reality only one of its elemental forms of socialization.

This reserve with its overtone of hidden aversion appears
in turn as the form or the cloak of a more general mental phe-
nomenon of the metropolis: it grants to the individual a kind
and an amount of personal freedom which has no analogy what-
soever under other conditions. The metropolis goes back to
one of the large developmental tendencies of social life as such,
to one of the few tendencies for which an approximately uni-
versal formula can be discovered. The earliest phase of social
formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social
structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against
neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles. How-
ever, this circle is closely coherent and allows its individual
members only a narrow field for the development of unique
qualities and free, self-responsible movements. Political and
kinship groups, parties and religious associations begin in this
way. The self-preservation of very young associations requires

The Metropolis and Mental Life 417

the establishment of strict boundaries and a centripetal unity.
Therefore they cannot allow the individual freedom and unique
inner and outer development. From this stage social develop-
ment proceeds at once in two different, yet corresponding, direc-
tions. To the extent to which the group grows — numerically,
spatially, in significance and in content of life — to the same
degree the group’s direct, inner unity loosens, and the rigidity
of the original demarcation against others is softened through
mutual relations and connections. At the same time, the indi-
vidual gains freedom of movement, far beyond the first jealous
delimitation. The individual also gains a specific individuality
to which the division of labor in the enlarged group gives both
occasion and necessity. The state and Christianity, guilds and
political parties, and innumerable other groups have developed
according to this formula, however much, of course, the special
conditions and forces of the respective groups have modified
the general scheme. This scheme seems to me distinctly recog-
nizable also in the evolution of individuality within urban
life. The small-town life in Antiquity and in the Middle
Ages set barriers against movement and relations of the
individual toward the outside, and it set up barriers against
individual mdependence and differentiation within the in-
dividual self. These barriers were such that under them
modern man could not have breathed. Even today a metro-
politan man who is placed in a small town feels a restric-
tion similar, at least, in kind. The smaller the circle which forms
our milieu is, and the more restricted those relations to others
are which dissolve the boundaries of the individual, the more
anxiously the circle guards the achievements, the conduct of
life, and the outlook of the individual, and the more readily a
quantitative and qualitative specialization would break up the
framework of the whole little circle.

The ancient polis in this respect seems to have had the very
character of a small town. The constant threat to its existence
at the hands of enemies from near and afar effected strict coher-
ence in political and military respects, a supervision of the
citizen by the citizen, a jealousy of the whole against the indi-
vidual whose particular life was suppressed to such a degree that
he could compensate only by acting as a despot in his own house-

418 The Metropolis and Mental Life

hold. The tremendous agitation and excitement, the unique
colorfulness of Athenian life, can perhaps be understood in
terms of the fact that a people of incomparably individualized
personalities struggled against the constant inner and outer
pressure of a de-individualizing small town. This produced a
tense atmosphere in which the weaker individuals were sup-
pressed and those of stronger natures were incited to prove
themselves in the most passionate manner. This is precisely
why it was that there blossomed in Athens what must be called,
without defining it exactly, ‘*the general human character** in
the intellectual development of our species. For we maintain
factual as well as historical validity for the following connec-
tion: the most extensive and the most general contents and
forms of life are most intimately connected with the most indi-
vidual ones. They have a preparatory stage in common, that is,
they find their enemy in narrow formations and groupings the
maintenance of which places both of them into a state of defense
against expanse and generality lying without and the freely
moving individuality within. Just as in the feudal age, the “free”
man was the one who stood under the law of the land, that is,
under the law of the largest social orbit, and the unfree man
was the one who derived his right merely from the narrow circle
of a feudal association and was excluded from the larger social
orbit — so today metropolitan man is “free** in a spiritualized
and refined sense, in contrast to the pettiness and prejudices
which hem in the small-town man. For the reciprocal reserve
and indifference and the intellectual life conditions of large
circles are never felt more strongly by the individual in their
impact upon his independence than in the thickest crowd of
the big city. This is because the bodily proximity and narrow-
ness of space makes the mental distance only the more visible.
It is obviously only the obverse of this freedom if, under certain
circumstances, one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the
metropolitan crowd. For here as elsewhere it is by no means
necessary that the freedom of man be reflected in his emotional
life as comfort.

It is not only the immediate size of the area and the number
of persons which, because of the universal historical correlation
between the enlargement of the circle and the personal inner

The Metropolis and Mental Life 419

and outer freedom, has made the metropolis the locale of free-
dom. It is rather in transcending this visible expanse that any
given city becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism. The horizon
of the city expands in a manner comparable to the way in which
wealth develops; a certain amount of property increases in a
quasi-automatical way in ever more rapid progression. As soon
as a certain limit has been passed, the economic, personal, and
intellectual relations of the citizenry, the sphere of intellectual
predominance of the city over its hinterland, grow as in geo-
metrical progression. Every gain in dynamic extension becomes
a step, not for an equal, but for a new and larger extension.
From every thread spinning out of the city, ever new threads
grow as if by themselves, just as within the city the unearned
increment of ground rent, through the mere increase in com-
munication, brings the owner automatically increasing profits.
At this point, the quantitative aspect of life is transformed
directly into qualitative traits of character. The sphere of life
of the small town is, in the main, self-contained and autarchic.
For it is the decisive nature of the metropolis that its inner life
overflows by waves into a far-flung national or international
area. Weimar is not an example to the contrary, since its sig-
nificance was hinged upon individual personalities and died
with them; whereas the metropolis is indeed characterized by
its essential independence even from the most eminent indi-
vidual personalities. This is the counterpart to the indepen-
dence, and it is the price the individual pays for the indepen-
dence, which he enjoys in the metropolis. The most significant
characteristic of the metropolis is this functional extension be-
yond its physical boundaries. And this efficacy reacts in turn
and gives weight, importance, and responsibility to metropoli-
tan life. Man does not end with the limits of his body or the
area comprising his immediate activity. Rather is the range of
the person constituted by the sum of effects emanating from him
temporally and spatially. In the same way, a city consists of its
total effects which extend beyond its immediate confines.
Only this range is the city’s actual extent in which its existence
is expressed. This fact makes it obvious that individual free-
dom, the logical and historical complement of such extension,
is not to be understood only in the negative sense of mere

420 The Metropolis and Mental Life

freedom of mobility and elimination of prejudices and petty
philistinism. The essential point is that the particularity and
incomparability, which ultimately every human being possesses,
be somehow expressed in the working-out of a way of life. That
we follow the laws of our own nature — and this after all is free-
dom — becomes obvious and convincing to ourselves and to
others only if the expressions of this nature differ from the
expressions of others. Only our unmistakability proves that our
way of life has not been superimposed by others.

Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division
of labor. They produce thereby such extreme phenomena as
in Paris the renumerative occupation of the quatorzieme. They
are persons who identify themselves by signs on their residences
and who are ready at the dinner hour in correct attire, so that
they can be quickly called upon if a dinner party should consist
of thirteen persons. In the measure of its expansion, the city
offers more and more the decisive conditions of the division of
labor. It offers a circle which through its size can absorb a highly
diverse variety of services. At the same time, the concentration
of individuals and their struggle for customers compel the in-
dividual to specialize in a function from which he cannot be
readily displaced by another. It is decisive that city life has
transformed the struggle with nature for livelihood into an
inter-human struggle for gain, which here is not granted by
nature but by other men. For specialization does not flow only
from the competition for gain but also from the underlying fact
that the seller must always seek to call forth new and differen-
tiated needs of the lured customer. In order to find a source of
income which is not yet exhausted, and to find a function which
cannot readily be displaced, it is necessary to specialize in one’s
services. This process promotes differentiation, refinement, and
the enrichment of the public’s needs, which obviously must
lead to growing personal differences within this public.

All this forms the transition to the individualization of
mental and psychic traits which the city occasions in proportion
to its size. There is a whole series of obvious causes underlying
this process. First, one must meet the difficulty of asserting his
own peronality within the dimensions of metropolitan life.
Where the quantitative increase in importance and the expense

The Metropolis and Mental Life 421

of energy reach their limits, one seizes upon qualitative differen-
tiation in order somehow to attract the attention of the social
circle by playing upon its sensitivity for differences. Finally,
man is tempted to adopt the most tendentious peculiarities, that
is, the specifically metropolitan extravagances of mannerism,
caprice, and preciousness. Now, the meaning of these extrava-
gances does not at all lie in the contents of such behavior, but
rather in its form of “being different, “ of standing out in a
striking manner and thereby attracting attention. For many
character types, ultimately the only means of saving for them-
selves some modicum of self-esteem and the sense of filling a
position is indirect, through the awareness of others. In the
same sense a seemingly insignificant factor is operating, the
cumulative effects of which are, however, still noticeable. I refer
to the brevity and scarcity of the inter-human contacts granted
to the metropolitan man, as compared with social intercourse
in the small town. The temptation to appear “to the point,” to
appear concentrated and strikingly characteristic, lies much
closer to the individual in brief metropolitan contacts than in
an atmosphere in which frequent and prolonged association
assures the personality of an unambiguous image of himself in
the eyes of the other.

The most profound reason, however, why the metropolis
conduces to the urge for the most individual personal exist-
ence — no matter whether justified and successful — appears to
me to be the following: the development of modern culture is
characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the
“objective spirit” over the “subjective spirit.” This is to say, in
language as well as in law, in the technique of production as
well as in art, in science as well as in the objects of the domestic
environment, there is embodied a sum of spirit. The individual
in his intellectual development follows the growth of this spirit
very imperfectly and at an ever increasing distance. If, for in-
stance, we view the immense culture which for the last hundred
years has been embodied in things and in knowledge, in institu-
tions and in comforts, and if we compare all this with the cul-
tural progress of the individual during the same period — at
least in high status groups — a frightful disproportion in growth
between the two becomes evident. Indeed, at some points we

422 The Metropolis and Mental Life

notice a retrogression in the culture of the individual with refer-
ence to spirituality, delicacy, and idealism. This discrepancy
results essentially from the growing division of labor. For the
division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-
sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided
pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of
the individual. In any case, he can cope less and less with the
overgrowth of objective culture. The individual is reduced to a
negligible quantity, perhaps less in his consciousness than in
his practice and in the totality of his obscure emotional states
that are derived from this practice. The individual has become
a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers
which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value
in order to transform them from their subjective form into the
form of a purely objective life. It needs merely to be pointed out
that the metropolis is the genuine arena of this culture which
outgrows all personal life. Here in buildings and educational
institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering
technology, in the formations of community life, and in the
visible institutions of the state, is offered such an overwhelming
fullness of crystallized and impersonalized spirit that the per-
sonality, so to speak, cannot maintain itself under its impact.
On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality
in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are
offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream,
and one needs hardly to swim for oneself. On the other hand,
however, life is composed more and more of these impersonal
contents and offerings which tend to displace the genuine per-
sonal colorations and incomparabilities. This results in the indi-
vidual’s summoning the utmost in uniqueness and particulariza-
tion, in order to preserve his most personal core. He has to
exaggerate this personal element in order to remain audible even
to himself. The atrophy of individual culture through the hyper-
trophy of objective culture is one reason for the bitter hatred
which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, above
all Nietzsche, harbor against the metropolis. But it is, indeed,
also a reason why these preachers are so passionately loved in
the metropolis and why they appear to the metropolitan man
as the prophets and saviors of his most unsatisfied yearnings.

The Metropolis and Mental Life 423

If one asks for the historical position of these two forms of
individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relation
of the metropolis, namely, individual independence and the
elaboration of individuality itself, then the metropolis assumes
an entirely new rank order in the world history of the spirit.
The eighteenth century found the individual in oppressive
bonds which had become meaningless — bonds of a political,
agrarian, guild, and religious character. They were restraints
which, so to speak, forced upon man an unnatural form and
outmoded, unjust inequalities. In this situation the cry for
liberty and equality arose, the belief in the individual’s full
freedom of movement in all social and intellectual relationships.
Freedom would at once permit the noble substance common to
all to come to the fore, a substance which nature had deposited
in every man and which society and history had only deformed.
Besides this eighteenth-century ideal of liberalism, in the nine-
teenth century, through Goethe and Romanticism, on the one
hand, and through the economic division of labor, on the other
hand, another ideal arose: individuals liberated from historical
bonds now wished to distinguish themselves from one another.
The carrier of man’s values is no longer the “general human
being” in everyindividual, but rather man’s qualitative unique-
ness and irreplaceability. The external and internal history of
our time takes its course within the struggle and in the changing
entanglements of these two ways of defining the individual’s
role in the whole of society. It is the function of the metropolis
to provide the arena for this struggle and its reconciliation. For
the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are re-
vealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the develop-
ment of both these ways of allocating roles to men. Therewith
these conditions gain a unique place, pregnant with inestimable
meanings for the development of psychic existence. The me-
tropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations
in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well
as join one another with equal right. However, in this process
the currents of life, whether their individual phenomena touch
us sympathetically or antipathetically, entirely transcend the
sphere for which the judge’s attitude is appropriate. Since such
forces of life have grown into the roots and into the crown of

424 The Metropolis and Mental Life

the whole of the historical life in which we, in our fleeting exist-
ence, as a cell, belong only as a part, it is not our task either to
accuse or to pardon, but only to understand.^^

11 The content of this lecture by its very nature does not derive from a citable
literature. Argument and elaboration of its major culturabhistorical ideas are con-
tained in my Philosophic des Geldes [The Philosophy of Money; Munchen und
Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1900].

Index

Absolutism, political, 160
Abstraction, knowledge impos-
sible without, 7
''Accumulation of capital," 66
Acquaintance, 320
Adornment, 338-344
Age, legal, 177

Age, primitivity, and diffusion
of elements, 28-29, 302
Alcibiades, 198
Alexandria, 277
Allah, 398

Althusius, Johannes, 251
Ambiguity, a sociological cate-
gory, 354
America, 120
Amicists, 358

Anarchism, see Socialism and
anarchism

Anarchy, in secret societies, 361
Anatomy, 9

Ancien Regime, 55, 57, 175,
238

Anglo-Saxons, 159, 172, 207, 298
Animal breeders, 30-31
Antigone, 230
Arabs, 255, 398

Arbitration, 146-147, 151, 164,
221-223

Aristocracies, 90-93, i43n., 208,
365-366

Aristocracy vs. equality, 295-298
"Aristocratic motive," 364-365,
366

Aristotle, 206, 252, 286, 296-297
Art, 42, 55; and artist, 18, 325;
and play, 43; and style, 341-
342; history of, 15, 17
Artist, aristocratic inclination of,
296

Ashanti, 217

Assassins, 366, 370

Athens, 168, 213, 225, 301, 418

Augsburg, 140

Australia, 166, 219

Austria, 281

Authority, 183-184, 273, 300
Autonomization of contents of
social life, 41-43

Axioms of the social sciences, 24

Ball (dance), 114
Barcelona, 107, 108
Bennigsen, Rudolf von, 215
Bentham, Jeremy, 216
Berlin, 176, 413

Betrayal, fascination of, 333-334,

350

427

428 Index

Bishops, Roman Catholic, 158
Bismarck, Otto von, 39, 186, 199,
2i5» 374

Blas^ attitude, 413-415
Body, as “first property,” 3220.,
344

Bohemia, 159, 280
Brahman, 192
Brazil, 102-103

Broken Dish, Association of, 124-

125

Buddhism, 176-177
Bureaucracy, simultaneous super-
subordination in, 290-291
Burgher, nobility, and peasant,
220

Bushmen, 92

Business partnership, 132, 319-
320, 385

Caesar vs. God, 231
“Capital” and “interest” in hu-
man relations, 393-394
Carbonari, 357, 359
Cartels, 95
Caste, 192, 208
Categorical imperative, 72-73
Catholic hierarchy: attainment
of position in, 303; super-sub-
ordination, within and toward
outside, 267

Catholicism, polytheistic aspects
of, 232-233

Causes, different, producing like
effect, 283

Center party, German, 157-158
Ceram, 349

Century (group of hundred), 107,
108, 110, 111, 172-174, 211
Charles II, 175
Chauffeurs, 370

Children, significance for mar-
riage, 128-129, 138-139, 146
Christian love, 325
Christianity, 90, 163, 191, 197,
223, 246-247, 347
Church, Roman Catholic, 223;

power position of, i6i
Cities: Dutch, 201; Flemish, 262-
263; French, 27 in.; German,
279; Greek, 92; Italian, 92,
151, 198, 216, 404; Rhenish,

175

City: hatred of, 413, 422; life,
119, 336, 409-423; vs. country,
^10, 414

City states, 196, 203
Clan-na-gael, 373
Class: differentiation, 74-75; sym-
pathies, 222

Classes and estates: custom as
custom of, 101; selective effect
of, upon individuals, 77, 210-
302-303

Clergy, English, and Parliament,
287-288

Coercion, 182-183, 187, 298-300,

392

Cognition: and “objectivity,”
258-259; transforming given
reality, 8, 69, iiyn., 308
Coins, Russian, 109
Collective behavior, negative
character of, 396-401
Cologne, 91, 277

Communication: natural vs. logi-

Index 429

cal features of, 311-312; writ-
ten, 352-355

Compromise, impossible between
conflicting moral claims, 230-
231

Concept, analogy to group, 96-
97, 220-221, 254-255, 257
Conciliation, boards of, 147, 149
Concubines, 327
Confession, 334

Confidence: and types of social
conditions, 318-320; as faith,
3i8n., 348; characteristic of
modern life, 313; characteristic
of secret societies, 345, 347-348;
vs. worthiness of confidence,

348

Conflict, deadliness of, among
homogeneous elements, 168,

195

Conflict of duties, 230
Conscience, 100, loin., 231-232,
254; and social and objective
ideal, 255-256; vs. majority
vote, 246-247
Contempt for mass, 32-33
Contents: of social life, 40-43;
psychological, idealization of,
99-100

Contract: as objective norm
above contracting parties, 264;
social, 182, 187, 188, 244-245,
278

Conventicle Act, 175
Conversation, 51-53
Coordination: and reciprocal
super-subordination, 286-291 ;
as subordination, 219-220; of
parties in arbitration, 221-223

Coquetry, 50-51
Corinth, 91

Cosmos, beginning of, 291
Court cabal and monarchy, 336n.
Courtesy, 49, 397, 400-401
Courts of arbitration, 221, 222
Cowardice, 153
“Credit economy," 313
Criminal code, analogy to logic,
399-400

Criminology, 14, 259-260
Cromwell, Oliver, 215, 288
Crowd cruelty, 228-229
Culture: and general affairs vs.
individual affairs, 335-337; ob-
jective vs. individual, 422
Custom, law, and morality, rela-
tions among, 99-104

Darwin, Charles, 30
David, King, 292
Death, 124

Decimal principle of group sub-
division, 171-174
“Decimation," 172
Delegation of responsibility to
group, 226-227

Democracy, 47-48, 93 - 94 » 110-111,
1430., 188, 205, 285, 286, 287,

295. 337. 365

Demosthenes, 327
Denunciation, 166
DesfKDtism: and equalization,
198-199, 374; and individuali-
zation, 204; and secret societies,
347, 361; hereditary, 299
Determinateness: a sociological

430 Index

category, 354; of group vs.
vacillation of individual, 256-28
Devaluation of objective world
as means of self-preservation,

415

Dharma, 99

Differentiation: of friendship,
326; primitive lack of (“lack
of skill“), 349-350^ 364^ 374;
social, 78-79, 81, 198; within
rising low strata, 279-282;
within individual, 203-204, 417
Diffused traits, low level of, 28-

29. 37-38. 93

Diocletian, 218

Discretion, 47, 320-324, 326, 329,

350

Discrimination, blunting of, in
metropolis, 414

Dissociation as socialization, 416
Distance: and perspective, 7-8; in
human relations, 321-322
Distance and nearness: dualism
of, 97n., 402; synthesized in the
stranger, 402, 404, 408
Distrust, as means of divide et
impera, 166

Divide et impera, 162-169
Division of labor, 81, 82, 83, 88,
ii3n., 284, 293, 420
Domination: and downward
gradation, 206-209; and level-
ing, 197-206; and mixed down-
ward-upward gradation, 210-
213; and upward gradation,
209-210; as interaction, 181-
183; as subjective quality, 269-
270; by one, strength and per-
severance of, 213-216

“Dominion by the best," 295-297
Dress, as adornment, 339, 340
Druids, 350-351, 367
Dualism, characteristic of: hu-
man life, 128; human nature,
315, 329, 361; social relations,
315; sociation, 385
Dyad: 122-144; absence of dele-
gation of duties in, 133-135;
intimacy of, 126-128; mutual
abandon in, 328-329; prefer-
ence for, by “decided" indi-
viduals, 137-138; sociological
significance of third element
for, 145; status-quo function
of, 140; triviality in, 125-126;
vs. larger group, 137-142; vs.
triad, 135-136

East-India Company, 224
Eating and drinking, 33
Economics, 83-84, 89, 156, 263-
264, 313; as a superstructure,
16

Edward I, 238; — II, 336n.

Ego, in Kant, 69-70
Egoism: and altruism of adorn-
ment, 339; vs. altruism, 59-61;
vs. desire for domination, 181

Egypt. 399

Elegance, 341

Employer and employee, conflict
between, 147, 149, 151, 160-161,
164, 221, 222

England, 147, 149, 167-168, 172,
176, 193, 194, 211, 212, 226-227,
240, 280, 298, 370; as tertius
gaudens, 158; kings and es-

Index 431

tates in, 153, 159-160, 163, 199,
217; trade unions in, 33, 160-
161, 164, 245, 264-265
Enlightenment, 81, 314-315
Envy, 338-339

Epistemological and metaphysi-
cal aspects of society, 23-25
Epistemology, Kantian, 69-70
Equality: as formal relation
among group members, 2700.-
2710.; as elimination of sub-
jective differences from social
structure, 297; as equal justice,
76; as expression of domina-
tion as a subjective quality,
270; vs. individuality as alter-
native values, 73-74
Error, 310, 312
Espionage, 336
Ethics, 60-61, 62, 71, 72
Euphron of Sicyon, 235
Exchange, as •objectification of
interaction, 387-388
Experience and interpretation,
inseparability of, 355
Extended family, 114-115

Factory workers, 253, 263
Facts, ascertainment vs. interpre-
tation of, 25

‘‘Faithful love,'' 379-380, 381
Faithfulness, 379-387; a sociolog-
ically oriented feeling, 384; as
affective factor sustaining so-
cial units, 381; indispensability
of, for society, 379, 381; legal,
38on.; moral aspects of, 385
Familistfcre de Guise, 89

Fas, 99

Federalist, The, 205
Feeling vs. intellect, 34-35
Fehme, 360

Feudalism, 191, 199, 207-208,
210-213, 216, 217, 224, 225, 232,
235» 297-298, 418
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 64, 80
Fingers, sociological significance
of number of, 171-172
Flanders, 216
Florence, 251

Form and content in: individual
life, 385-386; social life, 22-23,
40-43, 144, 385-387
Fourier, Charles, 89
France, 123, 124, 140, 158, 215,
233“234> 383

Frankfort, 107, 277, 407
Fraternity vs. freedom and equal-
ity, 67

Frederick the Great, 32, 69
Free competition, 83, 156
Freedom: and domination, 122,
185; and inequality in nine-
teenth century, 78; and law
and morality, loon.-ioin.; and
subordination, 182; and polit-
ical subordination, insepara-
bility of, in ancient Greece,
247; as duty, 392; as libera-
tion, 121, 122; as liberation
from subordination, 273; as
participation in government,
274; as power relation, 122;
from general normative order,
in secret societies, 360-361; in
Kant, 72-73; individual, and
group size, 102-103; relativity

432 Index

of, to group, 418; sociological
character of, 120-122; vs. com-
fort, 418

Freedom and equality, 275-276;
antinomy between, 65-67, 73-
84

Freeman, Edward Augustus, 33
Freemasonry, 212-213, 272, 346,

35 ^* 358. 36 369* 371

Freiburg, 365

French Revolution, 64, 214, 274^

275

Friendship, 138; and love, as
total-personality relations, 324-
326; forms of address in, 386

Games, social, 49-50, 228
Gardunas, 371
Gaul, 197

Geisteswissenschaften, i2n.
‘‘General human character,** 418
Geneva, 208
Gens, 91, 173
Genuineness, 342-343
Geometry, 21, 152, 200
George III, 165, 332
Germanic tribes, 103, 104, 108
Germany, modem, 94-95, 398
Gesellschaft fiir ethische Kultur,
2710.

Ghent, 216

Gift and return gift, 390, 392
Giving, as interaction, 389n.
Glorious Revolution, 287
God: as “higher tribunal,** 197;
Hebrew, 223, 398; on side of
majority, 247; “proof of,**
3i8n.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
60, 66, 79-80, 81, 384, 423
“Good form," 44
“Good will,** 62-63
Gossip, 334
Gothic style, 5

Government by law vs. by person,
250-253
Grammar, 22

Gratitude, 387-395; as conscious-
ness of impossible return gift,
392; as continuance of social
relation, 388-389; as means of
social cohesion, 389; as moral
memory of mankind, 388; as
supplement of legal order, 387;
irredeemability of, 394-395
Great Elector, 263
“Great** men, 321
Greeks, 5, 34, 93, 139, 168, 175,
188, 292, 397

Grotius, Hugo, 202-203, 242-243
Group: autonomy of, over indi-
vidual, 110-111; cohesiveness,
94-95; completeness, 95; cus-
tom as function of, 99-104;
decreasing cohesion of, and in-
crease of individual freedom,
416-417; dissociating effects
upon, of subordination to
ruler, 194-195; divisions, quan-
titative determination of, 105-
117; egoism, 367-368; exclu-
siveness of, 368-369; inclusive-
ness, 95, 368-369; large, 105,
174, 279, 335; membership,
lowering personality value,
133-134; numerical aspects of
outside relations of, 174-177;

numerical subdivisions of, 106-
107, 170-177, 211; of specific
numbers of members, 118-169;
organization of, on numerical
principles, 109-111; organs, 96;
prominent members of, 97-98;
quantitative aspects of, 85-177;
radicalism, 94-95; significance
of, expressed by adornment of
member, 343; small, 87-93, 105,
174, 279; structure, and truth-
fulness and lie, 314-315; unifi-
cation of, in opposition to
ruler, 192-194

Group size, 94-95; and chance of
domination, 203-204; and cus-
tom, law, and morality, 101-
110; legal regulation of, 174-
177

Guilds, 219, 251, 277, 278-279,
294^ 349 ^., 376

Habit producing faithfulness,
382-383

Hamilton, Alexander, 205
Handicraft vs. art, 341
Hanover, 215
Harems, 195
Heine, Heinrich, 32
Henry III, 153

Herder, Johann Gottfried von,

79> 81

Hermits, 120
Hero and valet, 39, 321
Herrnhuter, 89
Hetaerae, 327

Hierarchy, in secret societies,

356-358

Index 433

“Higher tribunal,’' 195-197, 221
Historical: changes, as changes in
sociological forms, 16; materi-
alism, 16; materials, method-
ological significance of Sim-
mel’s, 88n.-89n.

History, sociological conception
of, 16

Hobbes, Thomas, 187
Hodges, H. A., i2n.

Honor, 101 and n.4, 321, 387
House of Commons, 33, 37, 153,
^33. 244

House of Lords, 219-220, 288
Human relations: and reciprocal
knowledge, mutual insepara-
bility of, 309; intimate vs. ra-
tional, 411; knowledge, truth,
and falsehood in, 307-316
Humanity vs. society, 61-64
Hundred, group of, see Century
Hungary, 248
Hypnosis, 186

Iceland, 106
Illuminati, 347
Incas, 165-166, 172-173
Incest taboo, 102-103
Incompetence, visibility of, 301
India, 30, 167-168, 192, 208, 224,
328, 398

Indiscretion, 323, 348, 350, 352
Individual: and group, forms of
relations between, 100, 108;
and society, 3-84, 54, 322-323,
344; and society in eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century views
of life, 58-84, 409, 423; as an

434 Index

interpretive category, 17-18; as
object of knowledge, 310-311;
as “compendium of mankind,"
80; as gauging developmental
stage of mankind, 62, 63; as
incomparable, 78-84, 126, 423;
as object of duty vs. legal sub-
ject, 286-287; conflict among
component parts of, 58-59; de-
valuation of, by majority rule,
137; effect upon, of group
organization on numerical
principles, 109-111; freedom
of, 64-65; ideal sphere around,
321; reality of, 4-7, 58; superi-
ority of, over mass, 31-33; vs.
group member, 28-29, 54, 76-
92-93» i34» 201-205, 248-249,
302, 318, 374-375; vs. social
being, 239-249, 386-387
Individual differentiation vs.

species differentiation, 138
Individual life as basis of conflict
between individual and soci-
ety, 58-59^ 239, 248-249
Individual similarity and dis-
similiarity, sociological signifi-
cance of, 30-31, 217-218, 332,
333

Individualism: eighteenth-cen-
tury-, 68-69; Renaissance
art and politics, 15; Kantian,
69-70; nineteenth-century-, eco-
nomic and philosophical as-
pects of, 83-84; qualitative vs.
quantitative, 8 1 ; Romantic,
anti-liberal tendency of, 82-83
Individuality, “decjided," vs.
“strong," 137-138

Individualization: and friend-
ship, 326; and marriage forms,
130-131; and secrecy, 334-338;
and sociological determination
of general vs. specific social
features, 131; and objectifica-
tion of culture, 351; eight-
eenth-century-, vs. nineteenth-
century-, 79-80
Induction, 13

“Induction by feeling," 381-382
Inequality, inevitability of, 65-67
Ingratitude, 393

Intellectuality: and impartiality,
152-153; as “higher tribunal,"
196; as protection against
metropolitan life, 410-411
Interaction, 13, 41, 46, 48, 104,
107, 113, 136, 145, 154, 174,
181-183, 188, 202, 285, 315, 331,
349n., 384, 387-388
Interest groups: reciprocal
knowledge of members of, 317-
318; secret society, a form of,

363

Interests, 40-41

International relations, 103,
104

Intimacy, 127, 325 - 329 » 3^6
Introduction, of strangers to one
another, 307-308, 320
Ireland, 237, 373
Iroquois, 140, 240
“Is" and “ought," 71, 80-81, 99,
256, 260-261

Isolated individual, 118-119
Isolation, 118-120, 355-356; socio-
logically positive significance
of, 120, 327

Israelites, 109, 17a
Italy, 123, 151

Janizaries, 383

Jealousy, 407; among subjects of
common ruler, 195; as means
of divide et imj>era, 165-166;
dyad, chief seat of, 136
Jerusalem, 172

Jesus Christ, 20, 79, 90, 142, 191
Jewelry: aesthetic vs. social value
of, 343; material of, 339-341,

342

Jews, 177, 191, 194, 269, 277, 403,
407-408

John, King, 200
Joint-stock companies, 335
Jokes and games, 33, 36, 43, 53
Journeymen, 264, 278
Jury, trial by, 241
Justice, 76, 2^9-260

Kant, Immanuel, 47, 62, 63, 64,
69-70, 72-73, 260, 392
King, English, and Parliament,
165, 233

Kinship, 109-110
Kleisthenes, 106

Knowledge: in human relations,
307-308; of external nature vs.
knowledge of persons, 308-309

Labor: laws, English, 155, 160-
161, 221, 222; unions, 95, 97,
160-161

Laissez-faire, 72

Index 435

Landscape and life-feeling, 333
Language, 315

Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 79, 82
Law, 17, 42, 83, 159-160, 227; as
“ethical minimum,** 27, 100;
as fixing variable relations,
385; group function of, 99-
104; interaction in idea of, 186-
189; objective character of sub-
ordination under, 254; relation
to ruler of a political unit, 205-
206; subordination of super-
ordinate under self-made, 262;
subordination under, 250-253
Laws of historical development,
19-20

Leader and led, 185-186

Lebensliige, see Vital lie

Leiden, 246

Leo the Great, 158

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 30,

Letter, as a form of communica-
tion, 352-355

Level, social: and individual, 21,
26-39, 112-113, 302; as approxi-
mation to lowest common level
of members, 36-39
Liberty, see Freedom
Lie, 312-316; and types of social
conditions, 312-315; sociologi-
cal vs. ethical aspects of,
316

Litigations, medieval, 29
Locke, John, 177, 244
Locri Epizephyrii, 173
Logic, as condition of social life,
399-400
London, 412

436 Index

Louis XI, 216; — XIV, 215; —
Philippe, 17111.

Love, 324-326, 328

Magic, sympathetic, 272-273
Magna Ghana, 193
Maine, Henry S., 220
Majority: as representative of
whole group, 242-244; rule,
110, 137

“Man-in-general,** eighteenth-
century-, 67-69, 80, 423
Mannerisms, 421
Marathon, 5

Marriage, 119-120, 127, 128-132,
146, 202, 288, 326-329, 382, 385;
a social institution, 327; and
coercion, 299; forms, 139, 327-
328; importance of outside
persons for, 130; non-dyadic
nature of, 129-130; prerogative
of, over free love, 299; vs.
friendship, 138, 326-327
Masks, 364, 373, 374
Mass, 90, 93-94, 133-134, 227-229,
281-282, 296-297; crimes, 14,
36, 134, 225; emotionality of,
34-36, 176, 227-229; ethically
valuable aspects of, 34; nega-
tive character of unifying bond
of, 396-397; radicalism and
simplicity of, 34, 93-94, 142-
144, 302

Mathias Corvinus, 216
Mazarin, Jules, 215
Means of production, socializa-
tion of, 66

Mediation, 129, 144, 367; char-

acteristic of all groups larger
than dyad, 148-149; neutraliza-
tion by, of affective character
of conflict, 147, 152; vs. arbitra-
tion, 147-148, 151
Mediator, see Triad
Mediocrity, 37
Mennonites, 89

Metropolis: and individualiza-
tion, 416-418, 420-421; and
mental life, 409-424; anonym-
ity in, 41 1 ; as arena of struggle
between individual as “gen-
eral** and as “unique,** 423-424;
as seat of money economy, 411;
as seat of objective culture,
422; brevity of inter-human
contact in, 421; functional ex-
tension of, 418-420
Metropolitan man: indifference,
suggestibility, and antipathy
of, 415-416; intensification of
nervous stimulation of, 410;
punctuality of, 412-413
Middle Ages, 113, 161, 210-211,
234, 262-263, 264, 276; Danish,
277, 278-279; German, 54-55,
81, 159-160, 173, 211, 216, 238,
240, 297-298, 347, 376
Military organization, claiming
whole individual, 359
Mind: evolution of, in terms of
consciousness and unconscious-
ness, 331; modern, calculating
character of, 412; primitive,

364

“Ministers,** medieval, 191-192
“Minorization,** 241
Monarchomachists, 278

Monarchy, 206, 213-216; and no-
bility, 193, 210-211, 218-219,
235, 238; relation of, to other
types of domination, 213
Money: and separation between
personality and position, 293-
294; as expression of exchange
value, 390-391, 411; as leveler
of things, 414; socially relevant
characteristics of, 335
Money economy, 335, 390-391;
connection of. with dominance
of intellect, 411-415
Moors, 269

Moral, the, definition of, 260
Morality: and “objectivity,"’ 260-
261; group function of, 99-104
Munich, 27 in.

Mysteries (secret societies), 360

Napoleon I,* 20, 137, 199, 204,
233J— 175

Natural law, eighteenth-cen-
tury-, 67, 68
Natural laws, 257
“Natural man,” eighteenth-cen-
tury-, 67-69

Natural science, 67, 412
Nature: eighteenth-century con-
ception of, 67-69, 70-71; man’s
relation to, vs. relation to soci-
ety, 257-258
Netherlands, 289
New England, 103
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 60, 61, 62,
63, 260, 409, 413, 422
Nihilism, 396
Non-Conformists, 194

Index 437

Non-knowledge, intrinsic to com-
munciation, 312

Non-partisan: neutrality vs. in-
terest of, in regard to conflict,
153^ position of, de-
fined, 150

Normans, 159, 207

Norms: increasing simplicity of,
with increasing sphere of appli-
cation, 397-398; observance
and violation of, in relation to
group size, 399-400

North Carolina, 177

Novalis (Friedrich von Harden-
berg), 81

Numbers: as classificatory prin-
ciple of groups, 105-106; as
designating members of secret
societies, 373; as symbols of
group divisions, 107-109; rela-
tive and absolute, 97-98; signif-
icance of, for military organiza-
tion, 106, 170-171; significance
of, for social life, 87-104

Obedience and opposition, two
sides of one attitude, 193

Objectification: as relation
among men becoming relation
among objects, 388; of conflict,
147-148, 161; of conflict, impos-
sibility of, 150-151; of domina-
tion, and group size and heter-
ogeneity, 292; of modern cul-
ture, 318, 319; “of the spirit,’'

351

Objective: and subjective aspects
of letter, 352-353; character of

438 Index

things, i6, 41; realms vs. soci-
ety, 62, 99-100, 255-256; signih-
cance, as an interpretive cate-
gory, 16-17; “spirit,** 352, 421;
values, 60-61, 99-100, 127, 147-

148, 173-174, 255'«56, 352J vs.

subjective life-elements, 284-
285; vs. “subjective spirit,** dis-
proportionate development of,
421-422

Objectivity: and cognition, 258-
259; and morality, 260-261; as
freedom from commitments,
405; as structure composed of
distance and nearness, 404;
definitions of, 256-257; in
Kant, 69-70; of rule by plu-
rality, 225-226; prerequisite of
written communication, 353;
vs. social norms, 256-258
Objects, 17, 41, 69
Old and new, esteem of, 29-30
Omladina, 171-172, 357
Orange Societies, 376
Organization, as exercise of
power, 357

Organizations, splitting up of,

Outvoting: 239-249; as expres-
sion of irreconcilable dualism
between individual and soci-
ety, 248-249; group unity pre-
requisite for, 245-246
“Owner of soil,** 403

Parents and children, 204, 383
Paris, 420

Parties, political, 34, 93, 94, 141-

i43» 157-158, 165, 205, 213, 233,
295; secret, 346-347
Pater familias, 114, 261-262
Patrimony, 253

Permissibility vs. expediency of

lie, 313-314

Persians, 5

Personality: and work, separa-
tion of, 283-285; containability
of, in one side of it, 391; de-
composition of, through inter-
action, 202-203; qualitative
character of, 202; radiation
through adornment, 339-340,
342; secret of, 320, 322; “signif-
icance** of, 321-322, 339
Peru, 165-166, 172-173
Philip the Fair, 175; — the Good,
201

Philosophical areas, surrounding
social science, 23
Philosophic des Geldes (Simmel),
4240.

Philosophische Kultur (Simmel),
5on.

Physics, 24
Physiocrats, 64

Plato, 91, 252, 260, 269-270, 296
Play, 42-43

Plebiscites, negative results of,

398-397

Pliny the Younger, 163
Poland, 91, 240
Polis, 417

Political organizations, prohibi-
tions against, 163
Polyandry, 92
Polygamy, 236
Polyneikes, 231

Polytheism, 232, 398

Portugal, 215

Position: contradictory require-
ments of, 301; creating qualifi-
cation for, 303; determination
of, by lot, 295, 301; vs. person,
291-295

Positions and qualifications: in-
commensurability of, 76-77,
208-209; inevitably dispropor-
tionate distribution of, 300-

303

Power: desire to please others as
a means of, 338-339; of groups
and individuals, 20-21, 226,
296; through perserverance,
234; transformed into personal
excellence through adorn-
ment, 343

Pressure, downward transmission
of, 236-237

Prestige, 184-185

Priests, 204

Primogeniture, 91

Prohibition vs. command and
permission, 399

Property, 37, 66, 262, 322 and n.,
332. 343-344: exchange, primi-
tive forms of, 388; intellectual
private, 322; jewelry as private,
344

Protection and confidence, as
characteristics of secret socie-
ties, 345-348

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 214,
285

Prussia, 224

Psychic process, nature of, and
communciation, 31 j -312

Index 439

Public life, dyadic vs. triadic
structure of, 141-142, 144
Public opinion, 101, 133, 185-186
Publicity: in democracy, 337,
365; potentially unlimited, of
writing, 352
Puerperal fever, 234
Punishment, 182-183, 186-187
Purchase, as kind of exchange,

390

Pythagoreans, 350, 367

Quakers, 35-36

Quantification in sociology, 105,
379

Quantity and quality, 115-117,

419

“Quatorzi^me,*' 420
Quinto, 109

Rarity and frequency in human
relations, 125-126, 406-407
Ratio, see Numbers, relative and
absolute

Reality, not immediate subject
matter of science, 8, 17
Reason: natural, vs. historical
unreason, 65; vs. will, 148, 162
Rederykers, 271-272
Religion, 14-15, 190-192
Religious: community, claiming
whole individual, 359; life,
social elements in, 15; organ-
ization, two tyj>es of, 190-192
Renaissance, Italian, 15, 204
Renegade, 383-384
Responsibility and ego, 374
Retz, Cardinal, 32

440 Index

Richard II, 217
Richerzeche, 91

Ritual, in secret societies, 358-
360, 361, 371, 373
Roman: Empire, 199, 208, 218,
224, 277, 290; law, 181-182, 188
Romans and Rome, 34, 83, 93,
139, 140, 158, 168, 173, 197,
212, 213, 225, 233, 280, 328
Romanticism, 81-82, 423
Rosicrucians, 359
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 64, 70-
71, 214, 245

Rule by grace of God, 301
Ruler: as adversary, 193, 195;
full personality quantum of,
vs. partial personality quanta
of ruled, 201-202; personal
superiority of, 292
Ruskin, John, 413
Russia, 140, 253, 290

Salvation Army, 272
Schiller, Friedrich von, 32, 70,

Schlegel, Friedrich von, 80, 82
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 80-81
Science, 41, 313; abstract char-
acter of, 11-13, 17
“Seasons, The,” 17 in.

Secrecy, 330-344; and immorality,
331; and individualization,
334-338, 355-356. 372-373: and
irresponsibility, 374-375; and
sociation, 355-356; and types
of social structure, 334-335; as
adornment, 337-338; as means,
332; attraction vs. content of.

332-333; evolutionary formula
of, 335-336; fascination of,
332-333; of governmental ac-
tivities, 336-337; of group ex-
istence vs. secrecy of group
features, 346

Secret, 123, 305-344; definition of,
330; ethical vs. sociological
significance of, 331; of s{>eaker
vs. letter writer, 355; of indi-
vidual vs. secrecy of group,
345; role of, in social life, 330-
332

Secret societies, 123, 17 in., 171-
172, 345-376; and central gov-
ernments, 375-376; and free-
dom, 360-361 ; as type of group,
361-362; as suitable social
forms for growing and de-
caying powers, 346-347; au-
tonomy and anarchy of, 361;
centralization of, 370-372;
claiming whole individual,
359-360; de-individualization
in, 372-373, 374: equality of
members of, 374-375; exoteric
and esoteric members of, 367;
features of, as quantitative
modifications of general group
features, 361-376; formal char-
acter of, 362-363, 366; group
egoism of, vs. group egoism of
open societies, 367-368; height-
ened cohesion of, through se-
clusion against outside, 369-
370; initiation into, 366-367;
irresponsibility of, 374; ration-
alistic organization of, 357,
358, 363; seclusion of, against

outside, 362, 363-364, 366-367;
signs of recognition in, 363-364,
371; unknown leaders of, 371-

372

Sects, religious, 89-90, 139, 347
Self: as core of individual, 79;
significance of, and differentia-
tion from others, 31
Self-perfection as an objective
value, 59-61

Sensitivity, and differential stim-
uli, 75-76

Sentimentalism, 1 24
“Servant of two masters,*’ 230
Servants, domestic: personal vs.
objective subordination of,
265-266; sociological signifi-
cance of number of, 140-141
Service and return service as
schema of social relations, 387
“Service,” feudal, 210-211
Sex relation vs. marriage, i3in.-
1320.

Shame, 331

Short-office terms, 289-290
Sib, 109-110

Silence in secret societies, 349-351
Similarity and dissimilarity, and
mutual destruction or unifica-
tion, 168

Simmel, Georg, i4n., 23n., 5on.,
88n.-89n., 424n.

Simultaneity of superordination
and subordination, 212-213,
285; and conflict over compe-
tencies, 289-291

Slaves and slavery, 212, 224, 250^
253^ 274

Sociability, 23, 40-57, 112; arti-

Index 441

ficial world of, 48-49; as play-
form of ethical problems, 53-
54; as play-form of sociation,
43-57; symbol of life, 55;
democratic nature of, 47-48;
equality in, 47-48, 49; historical
illustrations of, 54-55; imper-
sonal character of, 46; princi-
ple of, 47; “superficial” char-
acter of, 55-57, ii2n.-ii3n.,
1 14; unreality of, 45
“Sociability drive,” 44, 47-48
“Sociability thresholds,” 46-47
Social organization, necessity of
coercion for, 298-299
Social relations: distance and
nearness in, 405-406; persever-
ance of sociological structure
of, 380-381 ; types of, by degrees
of reciprocal knowledge of
their participants, 317-329
Social structures, small, imitation
of encompassing structures,
360

Social-Democratic party, Ger-
man, 94-95, 158

Socialism, 66, 73-78, 87-89, 208-
209, 409; and anarchism, socio-
logical error of, 282-283, 294-

295

Sociation, 4, 9-10, 14, 22, 26, 41,
122, 181, 200, 385, 388; and
fear, 356; as compensation for
isolating effect of secrecy, 355
Societal forms: cases of, 22, 183,
186, 192, 196, 214, 27in., 331,
356, 362-363, 384-385, 421;
study of, 21-23, 200; vs. societal
contents, 22, 40-41

442 Index

Societal production vs. individ-
ual invention and divine gift,
12-13, 257

Societas leonina, 182 and n.

Society: and economy, 258; and
interaction, 9, 21; and “objec-
tivity,'' 256-261; as an inter-
pretive category, 18-19; as be-
tween individual and nature,
257; definitions of, 9, 10, 21,
40; democratic vs. liberal-indi-
vidualistic conceptions of, 110-
111; general but non-abstract
character of, 257; historical
development of, by shifts in
spheres of secrecy, 330-331;
individual, and objectivity, as
three powers of historical life,
256; inherency of, in individ-
ual, 58, loin.; knowledge of,
3-11; leveling effect of, 63-64;
reality of, 4-7; vs. humanity,
61-64

“Society" (social gathering, “par-
ty"), 44 and n., 111-114, 119,
126, 349n.

Sociological: determination of
general vs. specific features of
social life, 131; problem, the,
23; structure, as ultimate his-
torical element, 16; study of
historical life, 16-21, 200

Sociology: abstract character of,
11-13, 200-201; and other sci-
ences, 4, 12, 13-14; as epistemol-
ogy of the special social sci-
ences, 24; as method, 13-16; as
a special science, 23; field of,
3-25; fundamental problems

of, 3-84; “general," 16-21; "gen-
eral," example of, 26-39; “phil-
osophical," 23-25; “philosophi-
cal," example of, 58-84; prob-
lem areas of, 16-25; “p^i'e" or
“formal," 21-23; “pure" or
“formal," example of, 40-57
Soldiers, personal vs. objective
subordination of, 266-267
“Solid structures" vs. “insecure
foundations," 18
Solon, 32, 153
Sophists, 116

Soziologie (Simmel), i4n., 23n.
Spain, 109, 158, 215, 241, 251,

269, 270, 289

Spanish America, 220, 281
Sparta, 90, 140, 168, 224, 269,

270, 365

Spatial relations, conditions and
symbols of human relations,
402

Spinoza, Benedict, 391
Spiritus familiaris, 262
State: eighteenth-century concep-
tion of, 68; theories of, 187,

244-245

Stirner, Max, 286
Strabo, 277

Strangeness, as element in hu-
man relations, 406-407
Stranger, 402-408; abstract char-
acter of relation toward, 405-
406; as interacting, 402; as
non-member, 407; confessions
to, 127, 404; impartiality of,
216, 217; mobility of, 403-404;
objectivity of, 404; typing of,
407

Stratification system: with con-
tact between top and bottom,
234-236; with downward but
not upward contact, 236-237;
without contact between top
and bottom, 237-239

Struggle for existence, 41

Stubbs, William, 235

Style, 341-342

Subordination: as group mem-
bership, 297-298; conceived of
as coordination, 219-220; kinds
of, 190; liberation from, as
gain in domination, 273-282;
of group in cooperation with,
and in opposition to, super-
ordinate, 190; of group to fel-
low member or to outsider,
216-221; personal vs. technical
(objective), 261-267, 283-285;
personal vs. technical, of
worker to* employer, 263-264;
relative, under mutually op-
posed superordinates, 232-234;
total, under mutually opposed
superordinates, 229-232; under
a heterogeneous plurality, 229-
239; under a plurality, 224-249;
under a plurality, conse-
quences for subordinates, 224-
229; under a principle, 250-
267, 372; under a principle,
effect upon relations between
superordinates and subordin-
ates, 261-267; under a princi-
ple, growing out of personal
power relation, 261; under a
principle vs. a person, 250-253;
under an individual, 190-223;

Index 44S

under mutually opposed super-
ordinates, 229-234; under ob-
jects, 253-254; under society,
development of into subordi-
nation under objectivity, 256-
261 ; under stratified superordi-
nates, 234-239

Superordinate and subordinate,
dyadic vs. triadic structure of
relation between, 140-141
Superordinates, need of, for sub-
ordinates, 338, 342
Superordination: in lieu of free-
dom, 273-282; of one ruler, and
unification of subordinates,
192, i95‘i97» 371-372; of person
vs. position, 292-293, 372; with-
out subordinates, 268-273
Superordination and subordina-
tion, 179-303; and degrees of
domination and freedom, 268-
303; as societal forms, 183, 186,
192; inevitability of, 76-77
Super-subordination: as form of
social organization vs. expres-
sion of individual differences,
291-295; beginnings of, 291,
314; economic, 284-285; recon-
cilability of, with freedom, 282-
285; without degradation, 283-
285

Swiss cantons, 92, 225
Switzerland, 397

Tacitus, 199
Tact, 45-46, ii3n.

Tattooing, 340

Tertius gaudens, 154-162, 232-

444 Index

234; conditions imposed by,
i 57'158; consumer as,
156, 233; divide et impera, a
variety of, 162; subordination
of, 232-234; two forms of, 154
Theatre audience, 14
Thebes, 91
Themis, 99
Thessaly, 224
Third Estate, 274-275
“Threshold phenomenon," re-
garding unification or enmity
among commonly suppressed
social elements, 194-195
Tiberius, 199
Tibet, 92
Tithe, 109

Titles, as expressions of super-
ordination without subordi-
nates, 271-272
Tories, 155

Trader and stranger, 403
Tragedy, sociological, 32, 124
Trajan, 163

Triad, 135-136, 145-169; role of
mediator and non-partisan in,

145-153

Tribes, nomadic, 106
Truth: and error, indispensabil-
ity of for social life, 310; as
coincidence of the logically cor-
rect with the psychologically
real, 241

Turkey, 195, 198, 200, 383

Unanimity vs. majority, princi-
ples of, 240-246

Understanding, of written vs.

oral communication, 354-355
Unfaithfulness, 385, 393-394
United States of America: city
administration in, 227; Episco-
pal Church in, 289-290; Free-
masonry in, 361; House of
Representatives of, 374-375;
president of, 213; public opin-
ion in, 133, 3980.; rating of
factory vs. domestic work in,

251

Unity, through shared negative
features, 397-399
Unknown, threatening nature of,

365. 375-376

Uprisings, imputation of, to out-
siders, 405 and n.

Value relations, 21
Values: human, social, and per-
sonal, 62; monetary form of,
335

Vanity vs. pride, 342
Venice, 90, 166, 167, 214, 365
Virginia, 290
Vital lie, 310

Volont^ gen^rale, 214, 245
Voltaire, 139

Voluntary military service, dif-
ferentiation of objective and
subjective life-elements in, 284-
285

Votes, weighing of, 248
Voting: as means of transforming
conflict into uniform result,
240; in medieval English Parli-
ament, 298

Waldenses, 89, 371
War, 92, 93

Watches and clocks, 412, 413
Weber, Carl Maria von, 35
Weimar, 419
Welfic Knights, 372
Wilhelm Dilthey (Hodges), i2n.
Wilhelm Meister (Goethe), 79, 80
William I, 186, 199, 215; — the
Conqueror, 159, 199, 200, 235

Index 445

Women: slighter individualiza-
tion of, 138; private property
of, vs. men's, 343-344

Workers' coalitions, see Labor
unions

Writing, symbol of ‘‘objective
spirit," 352

Xerxes, 168

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